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16 — 4737^-2 OPO 



OKATION 

ON THE 

LIFE AND CHARACTER 

OF ^ 

GILBERT MOTIER DE LAFAYETTE. 

DELIVERED 

AT THE REQUEST OF BOTH HOUSES OF THE 

4>OIVC}RESS OF THE TNITED STATES 

BEFORE THEM, 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

AT WASHfNGTON, 
On the 31st of December, 1834. 

BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 

A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE. 



CUYAHOGA FALLS : 

PUBLISHED BY O. B. AND J. A. BEEBB. 

1835, 










lEW. 




/! i/pf ^ 







ORATION. 



Fellow-citizens of the Senate and 

House of Representatives oy the United States: 

If the authority by which I am now called to address you is one of the higK 
est honors that could be conferred upon a citizen of this Union by his coun- 
trymen, I cannot dissemble to myself that it embraces at the same time one 
of the most arduous duties that could be imposed. Grateful to you for the 
honor conferred upon me by your invitation, a sentiment of irrepressible and 
fearful diffidence absorbs every faculty of my soul in contemplating the magni- 
tude, the difficulties, and the delicacy of the task which it has been your pleasure 
to assign to me. 

I am to speak to the North American States and People, assembled here 
in the persons of their honored and confidential Lawgivers and Representatives, 
I am to speak to them by their own appointment, upon the Life and Char- 
acter of a man whose life was, for nearly threescore years, the history of the 
civilized world — of a man, of whose character, to say that it is indissolubly 
identified with the Revolution of our Independence, is little more than to mark 
the features of his childliood — of a man, the personified image of self-circum- 
scribed liberty. Nor can it escape the most superficial observation, that, ia 
speaking to the fathers of the land upon the Life and Character of LAFAY- 
ETTE, I cannot forbear to touch upon topics which are yet deeply convulsing 
the world, both of opinion and of action. I am to walk between burning 
ploughshares — to tread upon fires which have not yet even collected cinders 
to cover them. 

If in addressing their countiymen upon their most important interests, the 
Orators of Antiquity were accustomed to begin by supplication to their gods 
that nothing unsuitable to be said, or unworthy to be heard might escape from 
their lips, how much more forcible is my obligation to invoke the favor of Him 
» who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire," not only to extinguish in the 
mind every conception unadapted to the grandeur and sublimity of the theme» 
but to draw from the bosom of the deepest conviction, thoughts congenial to the 
merits which it is the duty ot the discourse to unfold, and words not unworthy 
of the dignity of the Auditory before whom I appear. 

In order to form a just estimate of the Life and Character of Lafayette, it 
may be necessary to advert not only to the circumstances connected with his 
birth, education and lineage, but to the political condition of his countrj 
and of Great Britain, hex national rival and adversary, at the time of his 
birth, and during his years of childhood. 

On the sixth day of September, one thousand seven hundred and fifly-seven 



the hereditary Monarch of the British Isknds was a native of Germany. A 
rude illiterate old soldier of the wars for the Spanish succession ; little versed 
even in the language of the nations over which he ruled ; educated to tiia 
maxims and principles of the Feudal Law ; of openly licentious life, and of 
moral character far from creditable ; — he styled himself by the grace of God, 
of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King ; but there was another and real 
King of France, no better, perhaps worse, than himself, and with whom he 
was then at war. This was Louis, the fifteenth of the name, great grandson 
of his immediate predecessor, Louis the fourteenth, sometimes denominated 
the Great. These two Kings held their thrones by the law of hereditary 
succession, variously modified, in France by the Roman Catliolic, and in 
Britain by Protestant Reformed Christianity. 

They were at war — chiefly for conflicting claims to the possession of the 
Western Wilderness of North America — a prize, the capabilities of which 
.are now unfolding themselves with a grandeur and magnificence unexampled 
in the history of tlie world; but of which, if the nominal possession had remained 
in either of the two Princes, who were staking their Kingdoms upon the issue 
of the strife, the buffalo and the beaver with their hunter, the Indian savage, 
would, at this day, have been, as they then were, the only inhabitants. 

In this war, GEORGE WASHINGTON, then at the age of twenty-four, 
was on the side of the British German King, a youtliful but heroic combatant ; 
and, in the same war the father of Lafayette was on the opposite side, exposing 
his life in the heart of Germany, for the cause of the Kino- of France. 

On that day, the sixth of September, one thousand seven hundred and fifty 
seven, was born GILBERT MOTIER DE LAFAYETTE, at the Castle 
of Chavaniac, in Auvergne, and a few months after his birth, his father feU in 
battle at Minden. 

Let us here observe the influence of political institutions over the destinies 
and characters of men. George the Second was a German Prince; he had been 
made King of the British Islands l)y the accident of his birth ; that is to say, 
because his great grandmother had been the daughter of James the First ; that 
great grandmother had been married to the King of Bohemia, and heryouno-est 
daughter had been married to the Elector of Hanover. George the Second's 
father was her son, and when James the Second had been expelled from his 
throne and his country, by the indignation of his People, revolted against his 
tyranny, and when his two daughters, who succeeded him had died without 
issue, George the First, the son of the Electress of Hanover, became King of 
Great Britain by the settlement of an Act of Parliament, blending together the 
principle of hereditary succession with that of Reformed Protestant Chris- 
tianity, and the rites of the Church of England. 

The throne of France was occupied by virtue of the same principle of 
hereditary succession, differently modified, and blended with the Christianity 
of the church of Rome. From this line of succession, all females were inflexibly 
excluded. Louis the XV. at the age of six years, had become the absolute 
Sovereign of France, because he was the great grandson of his iumiediate 
predecessor. lie was the third generation in descent from the preceding King, 



and by the law of pi-inn^^uituro engrafted upon tliat of lineal succession, did, 
by the death of his ancestor, forthwith succeed, though in childhood, to an- 
absolute throne, in preference to numerous descendants from that same ancestor, 
then in the full vigor of manhood. 

The first reflection that must occur to a rational being, in contemplating 
t.hese two results of the principle of hereditary succession, as resorted to for 
desio-nating the Rulers of Nations, is, that two persons more unfit to occupy 
the thrones of Britain and France, at the time of their respective accessions, 
could scarcely have been found upon the face of the globe — George the Second, 
a foreigner, tiic son and grandson of foreigners, born beyond the seas, 
educated in uncongenial manners, ignorant of the Constitution, of the Laws, 
even of the language of the People over whom he was to rule ; and Louis 
the Fueenth, an infant, incapable of discerning his right hand from hi;; left. 
Yet strange as it may sound to the ear of unsophisticated reason, the British 
nation were wedded to the belief that this act of settlement, fixing the Crown 
upon the heads of this succession of total strangers. Was the brightest and 
most glorious exemplification of their national freedom, and not less strange, 
if aught in the imperfection of human reason could seem strange, was that 
deep conviction of the French people, at the same period, that their chief glory 
and happiness consisted in the vehemence of their affection for their King, 
because he was descended in an unbroken male line of genealogy from Saint 
Loiiis. 

One of the fruits of this line of hereditary succession, modified by sectarian 
principles of religion was, to make the peace and war, the happiness or misery 
of the People of the British Empire, dependent upon the fortunes of the 
Electorate of Hanover — the personal domain of their imported King. This 
was a result calamitous alike to the people of Hanover, of Britain, and of 
France ; for it was one of the two causes of that dreadful war then waging 
between them; and as the cause, so was this a principal theatre'of that disastrous 
war. It was at Miiiden, in the heart of tlie Electorate of Hanover, that 
the father of Lafayette fell, and left him an orphan, a victim to that war, and 
to the principle of hereditary succession from which it emanated. 

Thus, then, it was on the sixth of September, 1757, the day when Lafayette 
was born. The Kings of France and Britain were seated upon their thrones 
by virtue of the principle of hereditary succession, variously modified and 
blended with different forms of religious faith, and tliey were waging war 
against each other, and exhausting the blood and treasure of their people, for 
causes in which neither of the nations had any beneficial or lawful interest. 

In this war the father of Lafayette fell in the cause of his king, but not of 
his country. He was an officer of an invading army, the instrument of his 
Sovereign's wanton ambition and lust of conquest. The people of the 
Electorate of Hanover had done no wrong to him or to his country. When his 
son came to an age capable of understanding the irreparable loss that he had 
suffered, and to reflect upon the causes of his father's fate, -there was no drop 
of consolation mingled in the cup, from tlie consideration that he had died for 
his country. And when the youthful mind was awakened to meditation. 



6 

upon the rights of mankind, the principles of Freedom, and theories of 
Government, it cannot be difficult to perceive, in the illustrations of his own 
family records, tlie source of that aversion to hereditary rule, perhaps the 
most distinguishing feature of his political opinions, and to which he adhered 
through all the vicissitudes of his life. 

In the same war, and at the same time, George Washington was armed, a 
loyal subject, in support of his king ; but to him that was also the cause of his 
country. His commission was not in the army of George the Second, but 
issued under the authority of the colony of Virginia, the province in which 
he received his birth. On the borders of that province, the war in its most 
horrid forms was waged — not a war of mercy, and of courtesy, like that of 
the civilized, embattled legions of Europe ; but war t& the knife — the war 
of Indian savages, terrible to man> but more terrible to the tender sex, and 
most terrible to helpless infancy. In defence of his country against the ravages 
of such a war, Washington in the dawn of manhood, had drawn his sword 
as if Providence, with deliberate purpose, had sanctified for him the practice 
of war, all detestable and unhallowed as it is, that he might, in a cause, virtuous 
and exalted by its motive and its end, be trained and fitted in a congenial 
school to march in after times the leader of heroes in the war of his country's 
Independence. 

At the time of the birth of Lafliyette, this war, which waste make him 
a fatherless child, and in which Washington was laying broad and deep, in the 
defence and protection of his native land, the foundations of his unrivalled 
renown, vras but in its early stage. It was to continue five years longer, and 
was to close with the total extinguishment of the colonial dominion of France 
on the Continent of North America. The deep humiliation of France, and the 
triumphant ascendancy on this Continent, of her rival, were the first results, 
of this great national conflict. The complete expulsion of France from North 
America, seemed to the superficial vision of men to fix the British power over 
these extensive regions on foundations immoveable as the everlasting hills. 

Let us pass in imagination a period of only twenty years, and alight upon 
the borders of the river Brandy wine. Washington is Commander-in-Chief of 
the armies of the United States of America — war is again raging in the heart 
of his native land — nostile armies of one and the same name, blood and languages 
are arrayed for battle on the banks of the stream ; and Philadelphia, where the 
United States are in Congress assembled, and whence their decree of Indepen- 
dence has gone forth, is the destined prize to the conflict of the day. Who is 
that tall, slender youth, of foreign air and aspect, scarcely emerged from the 
years of boyhood, and fresh from the walls of a college ; fighting, a vokmteeri 
at the side of Washington, bleeding, unconsciously to himself, and rallying his 
men to secure the retreat of the scattered American ranks ? It is Gilbert 
MoTiERDE Lafayette — the son of the victim of Minden ; and he is bleeding 
in the cause of North American Independence and of Freedom. 

We pause one moment to inquire what was this cause of North American 
Independence, and what were the motives and inducements to the youthful 
Btranper to devote himself, his life, and his fortune, to it. 



The People of the British Colonies in North America, after a controversy 
of ten years' duration with their Sovereign beyond the seas, upon an attempt 
by him and his Parliament to tax them witiiout their consent, had been con- 
strained by necessity to declare tliemselves independent — to dissolve the tie 
of their allegiance to him — to renounce their right to his protection, and to 
assume their station among the independent civilized nations of the earth. 
This had been done with a deliberation and solemnity unexampled in the history 
of the world — done in tlie midst of a civil war, differing in character from 
any of those which for centuries before had desolated Europe. The war 
liad arisen upon a question between the rights of the People and the powers of 
their Government. The discussions, in the progress of the controversy, had 
opened to tlie contemplations of men the first foundations of civil society and 
of government. The war of Independence began by litigation upon a petty 
stamp on paper, and a lax of three pence a pound upon tea ; but these broke up 
the fountains of the great deep, and the deluge ensued. Had the British Parlia- 
ment the riglil to tax the People of the Colonies in another hemisphere, not 
i-epresented in the Imperial Legislature? they affirmed they had ; the people 
of the Colonies insisted they had not. Thei'e were ten years of pleading 
before they came to an issue ; and all the legitimate sources of power, and 
all the primitive elements of freedom, were scrutinized, debated, analyzed, 
and elucidated, before the ligliting of the torch of Ate, and her cry of havoc 
upon letting slip the dogs of war. 

When the day of conflict came, the issue of the contest was necessarily 
changed. The people of the Colonies had maintained the contest, on the 
principle of resisting the invasion of chartered rights— »first by argument 
and remonstrance, and finally, by appeal to the sword. But with the war came 
the necessary exercise of sovereign powers. The Declaration of Indepen- 
dence justified itself as the only possible remedy for insufferable wrongs. It 
seated itself upon the first foundations of the law of nature, and the incontest- 
ible doctrine of human rights. There was no longer any question of the 
constitutional powers of the British Parliament, or of violated Colonial charters./ 
Thenceforward the American nation supported its existence by war ; and the 
British nation, by war, was contending for conquest. As, between the two 
parties, the single question at issue was Independence — but in the confederate 
existence of the North American Union, Liberty — not only their own 
liberty, but the vital principle of liberty to the whole race of civilized man 
was involved. 

It was at this stage of the conflict, and immediately after the Declaration 
of Independence that it drew the attention, and called into action the moral 
sensibilities and the intellectual faculties of Lafayette, then in the nineteenth 
year of his age. 

The war was revolutionary. It began by the dissolution of the British 
Government in the Colonies; the People of which were, by that operation, 
lefl without any government whatever. They were then at one and the same 
time, maintaining their independent national existence by war, and forming new 
social compacts for their own government thenceforward. The construction of 



civil society; the extent and tlie limitations of oroanized power ; the establish- 
ment of a system of government combining the greatest enlargement of individ-- 
ual liberty With the most perfect preservation of public order. The conse- 
quences of this state of things to the history of mankind, and especially of 
Europe, were foreseen by none. Europe saw nothing but the war ; a People 
struggling for liberty, and against oppression ; and the People in every part 
of Europe sympathised with the People of the American. Colonies. 

With their Governments it was not so. The People of the American Col- 
onies were insurgents ; all governments abhor insurrection ; they were 
revolted Colonists. The great maritime powers of Europe had Colonies of 
thei.r own, to which the example of resistance against oppression might 
be contagious. The American Colonies were stigmatized in all the official 
acts of the British Government as re&eZs ; and rebellion to the governing part 
of mankind is as the sin of witchcraft. The Governments of Europe, there- 
fore, were, at heart, on the side of theBritish Government in this war, and the 
People of Europe were on the side of the American People. 

Lafayette, by his position and condition in life, was one of those, who, 
governed by the ordinary impulses which influence and control the conduct of 
men, would have sided in sentiment with the British or Royal cause. 

Lafayette was born a subject of the most absolute and riiost splendid Mon- 
archy of Europe, and in the highest rank of her proud chivalrousNobility. He 
had been educated at a College of the University of Paris, founded by the royal 
munificence of Ijouis the Fourteenth, or of his Minister, Cardinal Richelieu. 
Left an orphan in early childhood, witli the inheritance of a princely fortune, 
he had been married at sixteen years of age, to a daughter of the house of 
Noailles, the most distinguished family of the Kingdom, scarcely deemed in 
consideration inferior to that which wore the Crown. He came into active 
life, at the change from boy to man, a husband and a father, in the full enjoy- 
ment of every thing that avarice could covet, with a certain prospect before 
him of all that ambition could crave. Happy in his domestic affections, 
incapable, from the benignity of his nature, of envy, hatred, or revenge, a 
life of "ignoble ease and indolent repose" seemed to be that which nature and 
fortune had combined to prepare before him. To men of ordinary mould this 
condition would have led to a life of luxurious apathy and sensual indulgence. 
Such was the life into which, from the operation of the same causes, Louis 
Fifteenth had sunk, with his household and Court, while Lafayette was rising 
to manhood, surrounded by the contamination of their example. Had his 
natural endowments been even of the higher and nobler order of such as adhere 
to virtue, even in the lap of prosperity, and in the bosom of temptation, he 
might have lived and died a pattern of the Nobility of France, to be classed 
in after times, with the Turennes and the Montausiers of the age of Louis 
the Fourteenth, or with the Villars or the Lamoignons of the age immediately 
preceding his own. 

But as in the firmament of heaven that rolls over our heads, there is, among 
the stars of the first magnitude, one so pre-eminent in splendor, as, m the 
opinion of astronomers, to constitute a class by itself; so, in the fourteen 



hundred years of the French Monarchy, among the multitudes of great and 
mighty men which it has evolved, tlie name of Lafayette stands unrivalled in 
the soHtude of glory. 

In entering upon the threshold of life, a career was to open before him. 
He had the option of the Court and the Camp. An office was tendered to 
him in the household of the King's brother, the Count de Provence, since 
successively a royal exile and a reinstated King. The servitude and inaction 
of a Court had no charms for him ; lie preferred a commission in the army, 
and at tlie time of the Declaration of Independence, was a captain of dragoons 
in garrison at Metz. 

There, at an fentertainment given by his relative, the Marechal de Brogliej 
Ihe Commandant of the place, to the Duke of Gloucester, brother to the British 
King, and then a transient traveller though at that part of France, he learns, as 
an incident of intelligence received that moi-ning by the English Prince from 
London, that the Congress of Rebels at Philadelphia, had issued a Declaration 
of Independence. A conversation ensues upon the causes which have contrib- 
uted to produce this event, and upon the consequences which may be expected 
to flow from it. The imagination of Lafayette has caught across the Atlantic 
tide the spark emitted from the Declaration of Independence ; his heart 
has kindled at the shock, and, before he slumbers upon his pillow, he has 
resolved to devote his life and fortune to the cause. 

You have before you the cause and the man. The self devotion of Lafayette 
Was twofold. First, to the People, maintaining a bold and desperate struggle 
for oppression, and for national existence. Secondly, and chiefly, to the 
principles of their Declaration, which then first unfurled before his eyes the 
consecrated standard of human rights. To that standard, without an instant 
of hesitation, he repaired. Where it would lead him, it is scarcely probable 
that he himself then foresaw. It was then identical with the stars and stripes 
of the American Union, floating to the breeze from the Hall of Independence, 
at Philadelphia. Nor sordid avarice, nor vulgar ambition could point his 
footsteps to the pathway leading to that banner. To the love of ease or 
pleasure nothing could be more repulsive. Something may be allowed to the 
beatings of the youthful breast, which make ambition virtue, and something to 
the spirit of military adventure, imbibed from his profession, and which he felt 
in common with many others. France, Germany, Poland, furnished to the 
armiesof this Union, in our revolutionary struggle, no inconsiderable number 
of officers of high rank and distinguished merit. The names ot Pulaski and 
De Kalb are numbered among the martyrs of our freedom, and their ashes 
repose in our soil, side by side with the canonized bones of Warren and Mont- 
gomery. To the virtues of Lafayette, a more protracted career and happier 
earthly destinies were reserved. To the moj'cZ principle of political actiom 
the sacrifices of no other man were comparable to his. Youth, health, fortune ; 
the favor of his King ; the enjoyment of ease and pleasure ; even the choicest 
blessings of domestic felicity — he gave them all for toil and danger in a distant 
land, and almost hopeless cause; but it was the cause of justice, and of the 
rights of human kind. 

The resolve is firmly fixed, and it now remain."! to be carried into pxecution. 

2 



10 

On the 17th of December, 1776, Silas Deane, then a secret agent of the 
American Congress at Paris, stipulates with the Marquis de Lafayette that he 
shall receive a commission, to date from that day, of Major General in the Army 
of the United States ; and the iMarquis stipulates, in return, to depart when 
and how Mr. Deane shall think proper, to serve the United States with all 
possible zeal, without pay or emolument, reserving to himself only the liberty 
of returning to Europe if his family or his King should recall him. 

Neither his family nor his King were willing that he should depart ; nor had 
Mr. Deane the power, either to conclude this contract, or to furnish the means 
of his conveyance to America. Difficulties rise up before him only to be dis- 
persed and obstacles thicken only to be surmounted. The day after the signature 
of the contract, Mr. Deane's agency was superseded by the arrival of Doctor 
•Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee as his colleagues in comniisssion ; nor 
did they think themselves authorized to confirm his engagements. Lafayette 
is not to be discouraged. The commissioners extenuate nothing of the 
unpromising condition of their cause. Mr. Deane avows his inability to furnish 
him with a passage to the United^States. " The more desperate the cause,' 
says Lafayette, " the greater need has it of my sei-vices ; and if Mr. Deane 
has no vessel for my passage, I shall purchase one myself, and will traverse 
the Ocean with a select company of my own." 

Other impediments arise. His design becomes known to the British Am- 
bassador at the court of Versailles,- wlio remonstrates to the French Government 
against it. At his instance, orders are issued for the detention of "the vessel 
purchased by the Marquis, and fitted'out at Bordeaux, and for the arrest of 
his person. To elude the first of these orders, the vessel is removed from 
Bordeaux to the neighboring port of passage, within the dominion of Spain. 
The order for his own arrest is executed; but by stratagem and disguise, he 
Escapes from the custody of those who have him in charge, and,' before a 
second ordei- can reach him, he is safe on the ocean wave, bound to the land 
of Independence and of Freedom. 

It had been necessary to clear out the vessel for an Island of the West Indies ; 
but, once at sea he avails himself of his right as owner of the ship, and compels 
his captain to steer for the shores of emancipated North America. He lands 
with his companions, on the 25th of April, 1777, in South Carolina, not far from 
Charleston, and finds a most cordial reception and hospitable welcome in the 
house of Major Huger. 

Every detail of this adventurous expedition, full of incidents, combining 
with the simplicity of historical truth all the interests of romance, is so well 
known, and so familiar to the memory of all who hear me, that I pass them 
over without further notice. 

From Charleston he proceeded to Philadelphia, where the Congress of 
the Revolution were in session, and where he offered his services in the cause. 
Here again he was met with difficulties, which to inen of ordinary minds, 
would have been insurmountable. Mr. Dean's contracts were so numerous, 
and for offices of rank so high, that it was impossible they should be ratified by 
the Congress. He had stipulated for the appointment of other Major Gen- 



11 

erals; and in the same contract with that of Lafayette, for eleven other officers,, 
from the rank of Colonel to that of Lieutenant. To introduce these officers, 
strangers, scarcely one of whom could speak the language of the country, 
into tlie American army, to take rank and'precedence over the native citizens 
whose ardent patriotism had pointed thern to the standard of their cou ntry, 
could not, without great injustice, nor without exciting the most fatal disr 
sensions, have been done; and this answer was necessarily given as well to 
Lafayette as to the other officers who had accompanied him from Europe. His 
reply was an offer to serve as a volunteer, and without pay. Mao-nanimity 
thus disinterested, could not be resisted, nor could the sense of it be worthily 
manifested by a mere acceptance of the offer. On the 31st of July, 1777, 
therefore, the following resolution and preamble are recorded upon the Journals! 
of Congress : 

" Whereas, the Marquis de Lafayette, out of his great zeal to the cause of 
Liberty, in which the United States, are engaged, has left, his family and con- 
nections, and at his own expense, come over to offer his service to the United 
States, without pension, or particular allowance, and is anxious to risk his lifa 
in our cause : 

"Resolved, That his service be accepted, and that, in consideration of his 
zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of "Ma- 
jor General in the army of the United States." 

He had the rank and commission, but no command as a Major General. 
With this, all personal ambition was gratified ; and whatever services he might 
perform, he could attain no higher rank in the American army. The discontents 
of officers already in the service, at being superseded in command by a stripling 
foreigner, were disarmed ; nor was the prudence of Congress, perhaps, without 
its influence in withholding a command, which, but for a judgment premature 
" beyond the slow advance of years," might have hazarded something of 
the sacred cause itself, by confidence too hastily bestowed. 

The day after the date of his commission, he was introduced to Washington! 
Commander-in-chief of the armies of the Confederation. It was the critical 
period of the campaign of 1777. The British army, commanded by Lord 
Howe, was advancingfrom the head of Elk, to which they had been transported 
by sea from New York, upon Philadelphia. Washington, by a countei acting 
movement, had been approaching from his line of defence, in the Jerseys, 
towards the city, and arrived there on the 1st of August. It was a meeting 
of congenial souls. At the close ot it, Washington gave the youthful stranger 
an invitation to make the head quarters of the commander-in-chief his home : 
that he should establish himself there at his own time, and consider himself 
at all times as one of his family. It was natural that, in giving this invitation, 
he should remai'k the contrast of the situation in which it would place him, with 
that of ease and comfort, and luxurious enjoyment, which he had left, at the 
splendid Court of Louis XVI. and of his beautiful and accomplisiied, but ill-fated 
Queen, then at the very summit ot all which constitutes the common estimate 
of felicity. How deep and solemn was this contrast ! No native American 
had undergone the trial of the same alternative. — None of them, save Lafay- 



12 

ette, had brought the same tribute, of his life, his fortune, and his honor, to a 
cause of a country foreign to his own. To Layfayette the soil of freedom was 
his country. His post of honor was the po.st of danger. His fireside was 
the field of battle. He accepted with joy the invitation of Washington, and 
repaired forthwith to the Camp. The bond of indissoluble friendship — the 
friendship of heroes, was sealed from the first hour of their meeting, to last 
throughout their lives, and to live in the memory of mankind forever. 

It was, perhaps, at the suggestion of the American Commissioners in Franco, 
that this invitation was given by Washington. In a letter from them, of 
the 25th of May, 1777, to the committee of Foreign Affairs, they announce 
that the Marquis had departed for the United States in a ship of his own, 
accompanied by some officers of distinction, in order to serve in our armies. 
They observe that he is exceedingly beloved, and that every body's good 
wishes attend him. They cannot but. hope that he will meet with such a 
reception as will make the country and hia expedition agreeable to him. 
They further say that those who censure it as imprudent in him, do never- 
theless applaud his spirit ; and they are satisfied that civilities and respect 
shown to him will be serviceable to our cause in France, as pleasing not only 
to his powerful relations and to the Court, but to the whole French Nation. 
They finally add, that he had left a beautiful young wife, and for her sake 
particularly, they hoped that his bravery and ardent desire to distinguish himself 
would be a little restrained by the General's [Washington's] prudence, so as 
not to permit his being hazarded much, but upon some important occasion. 

The head quarters of Washington, serving as a volunteer, with the rank and 
commission of a Major General without command, was precisely the station 
adapted to the developement of his character, to his own honor, and that of 
the army, and to the prudent management of the country's cause. To him it 
was at once a severe school of experience, and a rigorous test of merit. But it 
was not the place to restrain him from exposure to danger. The time at which 
he joined the Camp was one of pre-eminent peril. The British Government 
and the Commander-in-chief of the British forces, had imagined that the 
possession of Philadephia, combined with that of the line along the Hudson 
river, from the Canadian frontier to the city of New York, would be fatal to 
the American cause. By the capture of Burgoyne and his army, that portion 
of the project sustained a total defeat. The final issue of the war was indeed 
sealed with the capitulation of the 17th of Oct. 1777, at Saratoga — sealed, not 
with the subjugation, but with the Independence of the North American Union. 
In the Southern campaign the British Commander was more successful. 
The fall of Philadelphia was the result of the battle of Brandywine, on the 11th 
of September. This was the first action in which Layfayette was engaged, 
and the first lesson of his practical military school was a lesson of misfortune. 
In the attempt to rally the American troops in their retreat, he received a 
musket ball in the leg. He was scarcely conscious of the wound till made 
sensible of it by the loss of blood, and even then ceased not his exertions in the 
field till he had secured and covered the retreat. 

This casualty confined him for some time to his bed at Philadelphia, and 



13 

afterwards detained liiin some days at Bellilehcm, but within six weeks he 
rejoined the head quarters of Washington, near Whiteniarsh. He soon 
became anxious to obtain a command equal to his rank, and, in the short space 
of time that he had been with the Commander-in-chief, had so thoroughly 
obtained his confidence as to secure an earnest solicitation from him to "Con- 
gress in his favor. In a letter to Congress of the 1st of November, 1777, he 
says, "The Marquis de Lafayette is extremely solicitous of having a command 
4' equal to his rank. I do not know in what light Congress will view the matter 
i' but it appears to me from a consideration of his illustrious and impcrtant 
*' connexions, the attachment which he has manifested for our cause, and the 
*' consequences which his return in disgust might produce, that it will be 
"advisable to gratify him in his wishes, and the more so, as several gentlemen 
" from France, who came over under some assurances, have gone back disap- 
" pointed in their expectations. His conduct with respect to them stands 
"in a favorable point of view, having interested himielf to remove their 
" uneasiness, and urged the impropriety of their making any unfavorable 
"representations upon their arrival at home, and in all his letters he has 
"placed our affairs in the best situation he could. Besides, he is sensible, 
" discreet in his manners, has made great proficiency in our language, and, from 
«' the disposition he discovered at the battle of Brandywine, possesses a large 
" share of bravery and military ardor." 

Perhaps one of tlie highest encomiums ever pronounced of a man in public 
life, is that of a historian eminent for his profound acquaintance with mankind, 
who, in painting a great cliaracter by a single line, says that he was just equal 
to all the duties of the highest offices which he attained, and never above 
them. There are in some men qualities which dazzle and consume to little 
or no valuable purpose. They seldom belong to the great benefactors of man- 
kind. They were not the qualities of Washington, or of Lafayette. The 
testimonial offered by the American Commander to his young friend, after a 
probation of 'several months, and after the severe test of the disastrous day o^ 
Brandywine, was precisely adapted to the man in whose favor it was given, and 
to the object which it was to accomplish. What earnestness of purpose '• 
what sincerity of conviction! what energetic simplicity of expression ! what 
thorough delineation of character ! The merits of Lafayette, to the eye of 
Washington, are the candor and generosity of his disposition — the indefati- 
gable industry of application which in the course of a few months, has already 
given him the mastery of a foreign language — good sense — discretion of 
manners, an attribute not only unusual in early years, but doubly rare in alliance 
with that enthusiasm so signally marked by his self-devotion to the American 
cause, and, to crown all the rest, the bravery and military ardor so briTliantly 
manifested at the Brandywine. Here is no random praise, no unmeaning 
panegyric. This cluster of qualities, all plain and simple, but so seldom found 
in union together, so generally incompatible with one another, those are the 
properties eminently trustworthy, in the judgment of Washington ; and these 
are the properties which his discernment has found in Lafayette, and which 
prge him thus earnestly to advise the gratification of his wish by the assignment 



1-4 

of a command equal to the rank wlsich liad been granted to his zeal auii 
his illustrious name. 

The recommendation of Washington had its immediate effect, and on the 
1st of December, 17'/7, it was resolved by Congress that he should be informed 
it was highly agreeable to Congress that the Marquis de Lafayette should be 
appointed to the command of a division in the Continental Army. 

He received accordingly such an appointment, and a plan was organized in 
Congress for a second invasion of Canada, at the head of which he was placed. 
This expedition, originally projected without consultation with the Commander- 
in-chief, might be connected with the temporary dissatisfaction, in the 
community and in Congress, at the ill success of his endeavors to defend. 
Philadelphia, which rival and unfriendly partisans were too ready to compare' 
with tiie splendid termination, by the capture of Burgoyne and his army, of the 
Northern campaign, undej the command of Ganeral Gates. To foreclose 
all suspicion of participation in these views, Lafayette proceeded to the Seat of 
Congress, and accepting the important charge which it was proposed to 
assign to him, obtained at his particular request that he should be considered as 
an oiRcer detached from the Army by Washington, and to remain under his 
orders. He then repaired in person to Albany, to take command of the troops 
who were to assemble at that place, in order to cross the Lakes on the ice, 
and attack Montreal ; but, on arriving at Albany, he found none of the promised 
preparations in readiness — they were never effected. Congress some time 
after relinquished the design, and the Marquis was ordered to rejoin the 
army of Washington. 

In the succeeding month of May, his Military talent was displayed by the 
masterly retreat effected in the presence of an overwhelming superiority of ths 
enemy's force from the position at Barren Hill. 

He was soon after distinguished at the battle of Monmouth ; and in September, 
1778, a resolution of Congress declared their high sense of his services, not 
only in the field, but in his exertions to conciliate and heal dissensions between 
the officers of the French fleet under the command of Count d'Estaing and 
some of the native officers of our army. These dissensions had arisen in 
the first moments of co-operation in the service, and had threatened pernicious 
consequences. 

In the month of April, 1776, the combined wisdom of the Count de Vergennes 
and of Mr. Turgot, the Prime ;.Iinister, and Financier of Louis the Sixteenth, 
had brought him' to the conclusion that the event the most desirable to 
France, with regard to the controversy between Great Britain and her American 
Colonies, was that the insurrection should be suppressed. This judgment, 
evincing only the total absence of all moral considerations, in the estimate, 
by these eminent statesmen, of what was desirable to France, had undergone 
a great change by the close of the year 1777. The declaration of Independence 
had changed the question between the parties. — The popular feeling of 
France was all on the side of the Americans. The daring and romantic move- 
mentof Lafayette, in defiance of the Government itself, then highly favored by 
the public opinion, was followed by universal admiration. The spontaneous 



15 

spirit of the people gradually spread itself even ovCr the rank corruption of 
the Court*, a suspicious and deceptive neutrality succeeded to an ostensible 
exclusion of the insurgents from the ports of France, till the capitulation of 
Bureoyne satisfied the casuists of international law at Versaillies that the sup- 
pression of the insurrection was no longer the most desirable of events, but that 
the United Statas were, de facto, sovereign and independent, and that France 
might conclude a Treaty of Commerce with them, without givmg just cause of 
offence to the step-mother country. On the 6th of February, 1778, a Treaty of 
Commerce between France and the United States was concluded, and with 
it, on the same day, a Treaty of eventual Defensive Alliance to take effect 
only in the event of Great Britain's resenting, by war against France, the 
consummation of the Commercial Treaty. The war immediately ensued, and 
in the summer of 1778 a French fleet under the command ot Count d'Estaing 
was sent to co-operate with the forces of the Uaited States for the maintain. 
ance of their Independence. 

By these events the position of the Marquis de Lafayette was essentially 
changed; It became necessary for him to reinstate himself in the good graces 
of his Sovereign, offended at his absenting himself from his country without 
permission, but gratified with the distinction which he had acquired by gallant 
deeds in a service now become that of France herself. At the close of the 
campaign of 1778, with the approbation of his friend and patron, the Commander 
in-chief, he addressed a letter to the President of Congress, representing his 
then present circumstances .with the confidence of afl'ection and gratitude, 
observing that the sentiments which bound him to his country could never be 
more propei-ly spoken of than in the presence of men who had done so much 
for their own. "As long," continued he, "as I thought I ccxuld dispose of 
mvself, I made it my pride and pleasure to fight under American colors, in 
defence of a cause which I dare more particularly call ours, because I had the 
good fortune of bleeding for her. Now, sir, that France is involved in a war, 
I am urged, by a sense of my duty, as well as by the love of my country, to 
present myself before the King, and know in what manner he judges proper to 
employ my services. The most agreeable of all will always be such as may 
enable me to serve the common cause among those whose friendship I had 
the happiness to obtain, and Vi'hose fortune I had the honor to follow in less 
smiling times. That reason, and others, which I leave to the feelings of 
Congress engage me to beg from them the liberty of going home for the next 
winter. 

As long as there wei'e any hopes of an active campaign, I did not think of 
leaving the field ; now that I see a very peaceable and undisturbed moment, I 
take this opportunity of waiting on Congress." 

In the remainder of the letter he solicited that, in the event of his request 
being granted, he might be considered as a soldier on furlough, heartily wishing 
to regain his colors and his esteemed and beloved fellow-soldiers. And he 
closes with a tender of any services which he might be enabled to render 
to the American cause in his own country. 

On the receipt of this letter, accompanied by one from Gen. Washington, 



16 

recommenduig to Congresst in terms most honorable to the Marquis, a com- 
pliance with his request, that body immediately passed resolutions granting him 
an unlimited leave of absence, with permission to return to tlie United States 
at his own most convenient time ; that the President of Congress should write 
him a letter returning him the thanks of Congress for that disinterested zeal 
which had led him to America, and for tlie services he had rendered to the 
United States by the exertion of his courage and abilities on many signal 
occasions, and that the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States at 
the court of Versailles should be directed to cause an elegant sword, with 
proper devices, to be made and presented him. in the name of the United States. 
These resolutions were communicated to him in a letter expressive of the 
sensibility congenial to them, from the President of Congress, Henry Laurens. 
He embarked in January, 1779, in the frigate Alliance, at Boston, and, on the 
succeeding 12lh day of February presented himself at Versailles. Twelve 
months had already elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaties of Commerce 
and of eventual alliance between France and the United States. They had, 
during the greater part of that time, been deeply engaged in war with a common 
cause against Great Britain, and it was the cause in which Lafayette had been 
shedding his blood ; yet, instead of receiving him with open arras, as the 
pride and ornament of his country, a cold and hollow-hearted order, was 
issued to him not to present himself at Court, but to consider himself under 
arrest, with permission to receive visits only from his relations. This ostensi- 
ble mark of the Royal displeasure was to last eight days, and Lafayette 
manifested his sense of it only by a letter to the Count de Vergennes, inquiring 
whether the interdiction upon him to receive visits was to l)e considered as 
extending to that of Dr. Franklin. The sentiment of universal admiration 
which liad followed him at his first departure, greatly increased by his splendid 
career of service during the two years of his absence, indemnified him for 
the indignity of the courtly rebuke. 

He remained in France through the year 1779, and returned to the scene of 
action early in the ensuing year. He continued in the French service, and was 
appointed to command the King's own regiment of dragoons, stationed during 
the year in various parts of the Kingdom ; and holding an incessant correspon- 
dence with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of War, urging the employment 
of a land and naval force in aid of the American cause. " The Marquis de 
Lafayette," says Dr. Franklin, in a letter of the 4th of March, 1780, to the 
President of Congress, " who, during his residence in France, has been 
extremely zealous in supporting our cause on all occasions, returns again to 
fight for it. He is infinitely esteemed and beloved here, and I am persuaded 
will do every thing in his power to merit a continuance of the same affection 
from America." 

Immediately after his arrival in the United States, it was, on the 16th of 
May, 1780, resolved in Congress, that they considered his return to America to 
resume his command, as a fresh proof of the disinterested zeal and persevering 
attachment which have justly recommended him to the public confidence and 



1? 

appkuse, and that they received with pleasure a tender of tlie further services 
of so gallant and meritorious an officer. 

From this time until the termination of tlie campaign of 1781, by the 
surrender of Lord Cornvvallis and his army at Yorktown, his service was of 
incessant activitj', always signalized by military talents unsurpassed, and by a 
spirit never to be subdued. At tlie time of the treason of Arnold, Lafayette 
vi^as accompanying his Commander-in-chief to an important conference and 
consultation with the French General, Rochambeau ; and then, as in every stage 
of the war, it seemed as if the position which he occupied, his personal character, 
his individual relations with Washington, with the officers of both the allied 
armies, and with the armies themselves, had been specially ordered to promote 
and secure that harmony and mutual good understanding indispensable to the 
ultimate'success of the common cause. His position, too, as a foreigner by 
birth, a European, a volunteer in the American service, and a person of high 
rank in his native country, pointed him out as peculiarly suited to the painful 
duty of deciding upon the character of the crime, and upon the fate of the 
British officer, the accomplice and victim of the detested traitor, Arnold. 

In the early part of the campaign of 1761, when Cornwallis, with an over- 
whelming force, was spreading ruin and devastation over the southern portion 
of the Union, we find Lafayette, with means altogether inadequate, charged with 
the defence of the Territory of Virginia. Always equal to the emergencies in 
which circumstances placed him, his expedients for encountering and surmount- 
ing the obstacles which they cast in his way are invariably stamped with the 
peculiarities of his character. The troops placed under his command for 
the defence of Virginia, were chiefly taken from the Eastern regiments 
unseasoned to the climate of the South, and prejudiced against it as unfavorable 
to the health of the natives of the more rigorous regions of the North. Deser- 
tions became frequent, till they threatened the very dissolution of the corps. 
Instead of resorting to military execution to retain his men, he appeals to 
the sympathies of honor. He states, in general orders, the great danger and 
difficulty of the enterprise upon which he is about to embai-k ; represents the 
only possibility by which it can promise success, the faithful adherence of the 
soldiers to their chief, and his confidence that they will not abandon him. He 
tlien adds, that if however, any individual of the detachment was unwilling to 
follow him, a passport to return to liis home should be forthwith granted him 
upon his application. It is to a cause like that of American Independence, 
that resources like this are congenial. After these general orders, nothing 
more was heard of desertion. The very cripples of the army preferred paying 
for their own transportation, to follow the corps, rather than to ask for the 
dismission which had been made so easily accessible to all. 

But how shall the deficiencies of the military chest be supplied 1 The want 
of money was heavily pressing upon the service in every direction. Where 
are the sinews of war 1 How are the troops to march without shoes, linen, 
clothing of all descriptions, and other necessaries of life ? Lafayette has found 
them all. From the patriotic merchants of Baltimore he obtains, on the pledge 
of his own personal credit a loan of money adequate to the purchase of the 

3 



18 

-materials, and from the fair hands of the daughters of the Monumental City, 
even then worthy to be so called, he obtains the toil of making up the needed 
garments. 

The details of the campaign, from its unpromising outset, when Cornwallis, 
the British Commander, exulted in anticipation tliat the boy could not escape 
him, till the storming of the twin redoubts in emulation of gallantry by the 
valiant Frenchman ofViomesnil, and the American fellow soldies of Lafayette, 
led by him to victory at Yorktown, must be left to the recording pen of History, 
Both redoubts were carried at the point of the sword, and Cornwallis, with 
averted face, surrendered his sword to Washington. 

This was the last vital struggle of the war, which, however, lingered through 
another year rather of negotiation than of action. Immediately after the 
capitulation at Yorktown, Lafayette asked and obtained again a leave of absence 
to visit his family and his country, and v/ith this closed his military service in 
the field during the Revolutionary War. But it was not for the individual 
enjoyment of renown that he returned to France. The resolutions of Congress 
accompanying that which gave him a discretionary leave of absence, while 
honorary in the highest degree to him, were equally marked by a grant of 
virtual credentials for negotiation, and by the trust of confidential powers 
together with a letter of the warmest commendation of the gallant soldier to 
the favor of his King. The ensuing year was consumed in preparations, for 
a formidable combined French and Spanish expedition against the British 
Islands in the West Indies, and particidarly the Island of Jamaica ; thence 
to recoil upon New York, and to pursue the offensive war into Canada. The 
fleet destined for this gigantic undertaking was already assembled at Cadiz ; 
and Lafayette, appointed the chief of the Staff, was there ready to embark 
upon this perilous adventure, when, on the 30th of November, 1782, the prelim- 
inary treaties of peace were concluded between his Brittannic Majesty on 
one part and the Allied Powers of France, Spain, and the United States of 
America, on the other. The first intelligence of this event received by the 
American Congress was in the communication of a letter from Lafayette. 

The war of American Independence is closed. The People of the North 
American Confederation are in the union, sovereign and independent. Lafayette 
at twenty-five years of age, has lived the life of a patriarch and illustrated the 
career of a hero. Had his days upon earth been then numbered, and had he 
then slept with his fathers, illustrious as for centuries their names had been, his 
name, to the end of time, would have transcended them all. Fortunate youth ! 
fortunate beyond even the measure of his companions in arms with whom he 
had achieved the glorious consummation of American Independence. His 
fame was all his own ; not cheaply earned ; not ignobly won. His fellow 
soldiers had been the champions and defenders of their country. They reaped 
for themselves, for their wives, their children, their posterity to the latest time, 
the rewards of their dangers and their toils. Lafayette had watched, and 
labored, and fought, and bled, not for himself, not for his family, not, in the 
first instance, even for his country. In the legendaiy tales of Chivalry we 



19 

read of tournaments at which a foreign and unknown Knight suddenly presents 
himself, armed in complete steel, and with the vizor down, enters the ring 
to contend with the assembled flower of Knighthood for the prize of honor, to 
be awarded by the hand of Beauty ; bears it in triumph away, and disappears, 
from the astonished multitude of competitors and spectators of the feats of arms.. 
But where in the rolls of History, where, in the fictions of Romance, where 
but in the life of Lafayette, has been seen the noble stranger, flying, with the 
tribute ofhis name, his rank, his affluence, his ease, his domestic bliss> his treasure, 
his blood, to the relief of a suffering and distant land, in the hour of her deepest 
cilamity, baring his bosom to her foes ; and not at the transient pageantry of a^ 
tournament, but for a succession of five years sharing all the vicissitudes of 
her fortunes ; was eager to appear at the post of danger, tempering the glow of 
youthful ardor with the cold caution of a veteran commander; bold and daring 
in action; prompt in execution ; rapid in pursuit; fertile in expedients — unat. 
tainable in retreat ; oflen expose^*, but never surprised, never disconcerted ; 
eluding his enemy when within his fancied grasp ; bearing upon him with 
irresistible sway when of force to cope with him in the conflict of arms'! And 
what is this but the diary of Lafayette, from the day of his rallying the scattered 
fugitives of the Brandy wine, insensible of the blood flowing from his wound, to 
the storming of the redoubt at Yorktown'? 

Henceforth, as a public man, Lafayette is to be considered as a Frenchman,, 
always active and ardent to serve the United States, but no longer in their 
service as an officer. So transcendent had been his merits in the common 
cause, that, to reward them, the rule of progressive advancement in the armies 
of France was set aside for him. He received from the Minister of War a 
notification that from the day ofhis retirement from the service of the United 
States as a major General, at the close of the war, he should hold the same- 
rank in the armies of France, to date from the day of the capitulation of Lord 
Cornwallis. 

Henceforth he is a Frenchman, destined to perform in the history of his 
country a part, as peculiarly his own, and not less glorious than that which 
he had performed in the war of Independence. A short period of profound, 
peace followed the great triumph of Freedom. The desire of Lafayette once ■ 
more to -!^e the land ofhis adoption and the associates ofhis glory, the fellow- 
soldiers who had b^ come to him as brothers, and the friend and patron of his 
youth, who had become to him as a father ; sympathizing with their desire- 
once more to see him — to see in their prosperity him who had first come to 
them in their affliction, induced him, in the year 1784, to pay a visit to the 
United States. 

On the 4th of August, of that year, he landed at New- York, and in the space 
of five months from that time, visited his venerable friend at Mount Vernon, 
where he was then living in retirement, and traversed ten States of tlie Union, 
receiving every where from their Legislative Assemblies, from the Municipal. 
Bodies of the cities and towns through which he passed, from the officers ot 
the army, his late associates, now restored to the virtues and occupations of 
private life, and even from the recent emigrants from Ireland, who had come • 
to adopt for their country the self-emancipated land, addresses of gratulation* 



2a 

and ot joy, the effusions of hearts grateful in tlie enjoyment of the blessings for 
the possession of which they had been so largely indebted to his exertions — 
and, finally, from the United States of America in Congress assembled at 
Trenton. 

On the 9th of December it was resolved by that body that a committee, 
to consist of one member from each State should be app<>inted to receive, and 
in the name of Congress to take leave of the Marquis. That they should 
be instructed to assure him that Congress continued to entertain the same high 
sense of his abilities and zeal to promote the welfare of America, both here 
and in Europe, which they had frequently expressed and manifested on former 
occasions, and which the recent marks of his attention to their commercial 
and other interests had perfectly confirmed. "That, as his uniform and 
*' unceasing attachment to this country has resembled that of a patriotic 
" citizen, the United States regard him with particular affection, and will not 
"cease to feel an interest in whatever may^oacern his honor and prosperity, 
«and that their best and kindest wishes will always attend him." 

And it was further resolved, that a letter be written to his most Chris- 
tian Majesty, to he signed by his Excellency the President of Congress, ex- 
pressive of the high sense which tiie United States in Congress assembled, 
entertain of the zeal, talents, and meritorious services ot the Marquis de 
Lafayette, and recommending him to the favor and patronage of His Majeety. 

The first of these resolutions was, on the next day carried into execution. 
At a solemn interview with the Committee of Congress, received in their Hall, 
and addressed by the Chairman of their Committee, John Jay, the purport of 
these resolutions was communicated to him. He replied in terms of fervent 
sensibility for the kindness manifested personally to himself; and with allusions 
to the situation, the prospects, and the duties of the People of this country, 
he pointed out the great interests which he believed it indispensable to their 
welfare that tliey should cultivate and cherish. In the following memorable 
sentences the ultimate objects of his solicitude are disclosed in a tone deeply 
solemn and impressive : 

•••May this immense Temple of Freedom," said he, "ever stand, a lesson 
" to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, a sanctuary for the rights of 
" mankind ! and may these happy United States attain that complete splendor 
" and prosperity which will illustrate the blessings of their Government, 
" and for ages to come rejoice the departed souls of its founders." 

Fellow Citizens ! Ages have passed away since these words were spoken ; 
but ao-es are the years of the existence of nations. The founders of this 
immense Temple of Freedom have all departed, save here and there a solitary 
exception, even while I speak, at the point of taking wing. The prayer of 
Lafayt-tte is not yet consummated. Ages upon ages are still to pass away 
before it can have its full accomplishment; and, for its full accomplishment, his, 
spirit, hovering over our heads, in more than echoes talks around these walls. 
It repeats the prayer which from his lips fifty years ago was at once a parting 
blessing and a prophecy ; for, vvere it possible for the whole human race, now 
breathing the breath of life, to be assembled within this Hall, your Orator* 
would, in your name and in that of your constituents, appeal to them to testify 



21 

for your fathers of tliu Jast generation, that so far as has dei)onded upon tlicm, 
tlie blessing- of Lafayette has been prophecy. Yes ! this • immense Temple 
of Freedom stiirstands, a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, 
and a sanctuary for tlie rights of mankind. Yes ! with the smiles of a benig- 
nant Providence, the splendor and prosperity of these happy United States have 
illustrated the blessings of their Government, and, we may humbly hope, liave 
rejoiced the departed souls of its founders. For the past your fathers and you 
have been responsible. The charge of the future devolves upon you and upon 
your children. The vestal fire of Freedom is in youv custody. May the souls 
of its departed founders never be called to witness its extinction by neglect, 
nor a soil upon tiie purity of its keepers. 

With this valedictory, Lafayette took, as he and those wlio heard him then 
believed, a final leave of the People of tlie United States. He returned to 
France, and arrived at Paris on the 25th of January, 1785. 

He continued to take a deep interest in the concerns of the United States, 
and exerted his influence with the French Government to obtain reductions of 
duties favorable to their commerce and ns!ieries. In the summer of 1788, he 
visited several of the German Courts, and attended the last great review by 
Frederick the Second, of his veteran army — a review unusually splendid, and 
specially remarkable by the attendance of many of the most distinguished 
commanders of Europe, in the same year the Legislature of Virginia man- 
ifested the continued recollection of his services rendered to the people of that 
Commonwealth by a complimentary token of gratitude not less honorable 
than it was unusual. They resolved that two busts of Lafliyette, to be executed 
by the celebrated sculptor, Hoadon, should be procured at their expense • 
that one of tliem should be jtlaced in their own Legislative Hall, and the other 
presented, intheir name, to the municipal authorities of the city of Paris. It 
was accordingly presented by Mr. Jeiferson, then Minister Plenipotentiary of 
the United States in PVance, and by the permission of Louis the Sixteenth, was 
accepted, and, with appropriate solemnity, placed in one of the Halls of the 
Hotel de ViLie of the Metropolis of France. 

W e have gone through one stage of the life of Lafayette : we are now to see 
him acting upon another theatre — in a cause still essentially the same, but in 
the application of its principles to his own country. 

The immediaieiy originatmg question which occasioned the French Revo- 
lution, was the same with that from which the American Revolution had sprung 
— Taxation of tiie People without their consent. For nearly two centuries 
the Kings of France had been accustomed to levy taxes upon the People by 
Royal Ordinances. But it was necessary that these Ordinances should be 
registered in the Parliaments or Judicial tribunals ; and these Parliaments 
claimed the right of remonstrating against them, and sometimes refused the 
registry ot them itself. The members of the Parliament held their offices by 
purciiase, but were appointed by the King, and were subject to banishment 
or imprisdnmeift at liis plensure. Louis the Fifteenth, towards the close of his 
reign, iiad abolished the Parliaments, but they had been restored at the accession 
pf his successor. 

The finances of the Kingdom were in extreme disorder. The Minister, or 



22 

Comptroller General, De Calonne, after attempting various projects for obtani- 
ing the supplies, the amount and need of which he was with lavish hand daily 
increasing, bethought himself, at last, of calling for the counsel of others. He 
prevailed upon the King to convoke, not the States General, but an Assembly 
of NotahUs. There was something ridiculous in the very name by which this 
meeting was called, but it consisted of a selection from all the Grandees and 
Dignitaries of the Kingdom. The two brothers of the King — all the Princes 
ot the Blood, Archbishops and Bishops, Dukes and Peers — the Chancellor and 
presiding Members of the Parliaments ; distinguished Members ofthe Noblesse, 
and the Mayors and Chief Magistrates of a few of the principal cities of 
the Kingdom, constituted this Assembly. It was a representation of every 
interest but that ofthe People. They were appointed by the King — were 
members of the highest aristocracy, and were assembled with the design 
that their deliberations should be confined exclusively to the subjects submit- 
ted to their consideration by the Minister. These were certain plans devised 
by him replenishing for the insolvent Treasury, by assessment upon the privileg- 
ed classes, the very Princes, Nobles, Ecclesiastics, and Magistrates exclusively 
represented in the Assembly itself 

Of this meeting the Marquis de Lafayette was a member. It was held in 
February, 1787, and terminated in the overthrow and banishment of the 
Minister by whom it had been convened. In the fiscal concerns, which absorbed 
the care and attention of others, Lafayette took comparatively little interest. 
His views were more comprehensive. 

The Assembly consisted of one hundred and thirty-seven persons, and 
divided itself into seven sections of bureaux, each presided by a Prince of 
the blood, Lafayette was allotted to the division under the Presidency ofthe 
Count d'Artois the younger brother of the King, since known as Charles the 
Tenth. The propositions made by Lafayette, were : 

1. The suppression of Letters de Cachet, and the abolition of all arbitrary 
imprisonment. 

2. The establishment of religious toleration and the restoration of Protes- 
tants to their civil rights. 

3. The convocation of a National Assembly, representing the People Qi 
France — Personal Liberty — Religious Liberty — and a Representative Assembly 
of the People. These were his demands. 

The first and second of them produced, perhaps, at the time, no deep 
impression upon the Assembly, nor upon the public. Arbitrary imprisonment, 
and the religious persecution of the Protestants, had become universally odious. 
They were worn-out instruments, even in the hands of those who wielded 
them. There was none to defend them. 

But the demand for a Nat'onal Assembly startled the Prince at the head 
of the Bureau. What ! said the Count d'Artois, do you ask for the States 
General ■? Yes, Sir, was the answer of Lafayette, and for something yet better. 
You desire, then, replied the Prince, that I should take in writing, and report 
to the King, that the motion to convoke the States General has been made by 
the Marquis de Lafyette 1 "Ye i Sir ;" and the name of Lafayette was accord, 
ingly reported to the King. 



23 

The Assembly of Notables was dissoWed — De Calonne was displaced and 
banished, ind his successor undertook to raise the needed funds, by the authority 
of Royal Edicts. The war of litigation with the Parliaments recommenced, 
which terminated only witli a positive promise that the States General should 
bo convoked. 

From that time a total revolution of Government in France was in progress. 
It has been a solemn, a sublime, often a most painful, and yet, in the contcmpla- 
vion of great results, a refreshing and cheering contemplation. I cannot follow 
it in its overwhelming multitude of details, even as connected with the Life 
and Ciiaracter of Lafavette. A second Assembly of Notables succeeded the 
first ; and then an Assembly of the States General, first to deliberate in separate 
•orders of Clergy, Nobility, and Third Estate ; but, finally, constituting itself 
a National Assembly, and forming a Constitution of limited Monarchy, with an 
hereditary Royal Executive, and a Legislature in a single Assembly representing 
the People. 

Lafayette was a member of the States General first assembled. Their 
meeting was signalized by a struggle between the several orders of which they 
were composed, which resulted in breaking them all down into one National 
Assembly. 

The convocation of the States General had, in one respect, operated, in the 
progress of the French Revolution, like the Declaration of Independence in 
-that of North America. It had changed the question in controversy. It was, 
on the part of the King of France, a concession that he had no lawful power 
to tax the People without their consent. The States General, therefore, 
met with this admission already conceded by the King. In the American conflict 
the British Government never yielded the concession. They undertook to 
maintain their supposed right of arbitrary taxation by force; and then the 
People of the Colonies renounced all community of Government, not only with 
the King and Parliament, but with the British Nation. They reconstructed 
the fabric of Government for themselves, and held the People of Britain as 
foreigners — friends in peace — enemies in war. 

The concession by Louis the Sixteenth, implied in the convocation of the 
States General, was a virtual surrender of absolute power — an acknowledgement 
that, as exercised by himself and his predecessors, it had been usurped. It 
was, in substance, an abdication of his Crown. There was no power which 
lie exercised as King of France, the lawfulness of which was not contestible on 
the same principle which denied him the right of taxation. When the Assembly 
of the States General met at Versailles, in May, 1789, there was but a shadow 
of the Royal authority lefl. They felt that the power of the Nation was in 
their hands, and they were not sparing in the use of it. The Representatives 
of the Third Estate, double in numbers to those of the Clergy and the Nobility, 
constituted themselves a National Assembly, and, as a signal for the demolition 
of all privileged orders, refused to deliberate in separate Chambers, and thus 
compelled the Representatives of the Clergy and Nobility to merge their 
separate existence in the general mass of the popular Representation. 



24 

Thus the edifice of society was to be reconstructed in France as it had 
been in America. The King made a feeble attempt to overawe the Assembly, 
by calling' regiments of troops to Versailles, and surrounding with them the 
hall of their meeting. But there was defection in the army itself, and even the 
person of tlie King soon ceased to be at his own disposal. On the 11th of .July, 
1789, in the. midst of the fermentation which had succeeded the fall of the 
Monarchy, and while the Assembly was surrounded by armed soldiers, 
Lafayette presented to them his Declaration of Rights — the first declaration 
of human rights ever proclaimed in Europe. It was adopted, and became the 
basis of that which the Assembly pramal^ateJ with their Constitution. 

It was in this hemisphere, and in our own country, that all its principles 
had been imbibed. At the very moment when the Declaration was presented, 
the convulsive struggle between the expiring Monarchy and the newborn but 
portentous anarch of the Parisian populace was taking place. The Royal 
Palace and the Hall of the Assembly were surrounded with troops, and in- 
surrection was kindling at Paris, in the midst of the popular commotion, a 
deputation of sixty members, v/itli Lafayette at their head, was sent from the 
Assembly to tranquilize the people of Paris, and that incident was the occasion 
of the institution of the National Guard throughout the Realm, and of the ap- 
pointment, with the approbation of the King, of Lafayette as their General 
Commander-in-chief. 

This event, without vacating his scat in the National Assembly, connected 
him at once with the military and the popular movement of the Revolution. 
The National Guard was the armed militia of the whole Kingdom, embodied 
jfor the preservation of order, and the protection of persons and property, as 
well as for the establishment of the liberties of the People. In his double 
capacity of Commander General of this force, and of a Representative in the 
Constituent Assembly, his career, for a period of more than three years, was 
beset with the most imminent dangers, and with difficulties beyond all human 
power to surmount. 

The ancient Monarchy of France had crumbled into ruins. A National 
Assembly, formed by an irregular Representation of Clergy, Nobles, and Third 
Estate, after melting at the fire of a revolution into one body, had transformed 
itself into a Constituent Assembly representing the People, had assumed the 
exercise of all the powers of Government, extorted from the hands of the King, 
and undertaken to form a Constitution for the French Nation, founded at once 
upon the theory of human rights, and upon the preservation of a royal heredi- 
tary Crown upon the head of Louis the Sixteenth. Lafayette sincerely believ- 
ed that such a system would not be absolutely incompatible with the nature of 
things. An hereditary Monarch}', surrounded by popular institutions, presented 
itself to his imagination as a practicable form of government ; nor is it certain 
that even to liis last days he ever abandoned this persuasion. The element of 
hereditary Monarchy in this Constitution was indeed not congenial with it. 
The prototype from which the whole fabric had been drawn, had no such ele- 
ment in its composition. A feeling of generosity, of compassion, ofcommis- 



25 

cration with the unfortunate Prince then upon the tlirone, who had been his 
Sovereign, and for his ill-fated family, mingled itself, perhaps unconsciously 
to himself, with his well-reasoned fliith in the abstract principles of a republican 
creed. The total abolition of the monarchical feature undoubtedly belonged 
to his theory, but the family of Bourbon had still a stiong hold on the affections 
of the French People ; History had not made up a record favorable to the 
establishment of elective Kings — a strong Executive Head was absolutely ncces" 
sary to curb the impetuosities of the People of France ; and the same doctrine 
which played upon the fancy, and crept upon the kind-hearted benevolence of 
j^afayette, was adopted by a large majority of the National Assembly, sanction- 
ed by tiie sulTrages of its most intelligent, virtuous, and patriotic members, and 
was finally embodied in that royal democracy, the result of their labors, sent 
forth to the world, under the guaranty of numberless oaths, as the Constitution 
■of France for all aftertime. 

But during the same period, after the first meeting of the States General, 
^and while they were in actual conflict with the expiring enero-ies of the Crowm 
and with the exclusive privileges of the Clergy and Nobility, another portentous 
power had arisen, and entered with terrific activity into the controversies of 
the time. This was the power of popular insurrection, organized by voluntary 
associations of clubs, and impelled to action by the municipal authorities of 
the City of Paris. 

The first movements of the People in the state of insurrection took place 
■on the 12th of July 1789, and issued in the destruction of the Bastille, and in 
the murder of its Governor, and of several other persons, hungup at lampposts, 
or torn to pieces by the frenzied multitude, without form of trial, and without 
shadow of guilt. 

The Bastille had long been odious as the place of confinement of persons 
arrested by arbitrary orders for offences against the Government, and its 
destruction was hailed by most of the friends of Liberty throughout the world 
as an act of patriotism and magnanimity on the part of the People. The 
brutal ferocity of the murders was overlooked or palliated in the glory of the 
achievement of razing to its foundations the execrated Citadel of Despotism. 
But, as the summary justice of insurrection can manifest itself only by destruc- 
tion, the example once set became a precedent for a series of years for 
scenes so atrocious, and for butcheries so merciless and horrible, that memory 
revolts at the task of recalling them to the mind. 

• Itwouldbelmpossible, within the compass of this Discourse, to follow the 
details of the French Revolution to the final dethronement of Louis the Six- 
teenth, and the extinction of the Constitutional Monarchy of France, on the 
10th of August, 1792. During that period, the two distinct Powers were in 
continual operation — sometimes in concert with each other, sometimes at 
irreconcilable opposition. Of these Powers, one was the People of France, 
represented by the Parisian populace in insurrection ; the other was the People 
-of France, represented successively by the Constituent Assembly,- which 
formed the Constitution of 1791, and by the Legislative Assembly, elected to 
-carry it into execution. 

4 



26 

The movements of the insurgent Power were occasionally convulsive anti 
cruel, without mitigation or mercy. Guided by secret springs ; prompted by 
vindictive and sanguinary ambition, directed by hands unseen to objects of indi< 
vidual ao-o-randizement, its agency fell like the thunderbolt, and swept like the 
whirlwind. 

The proceedings of the Assemblies were deliberative and intellectual. They 
began by grasping at the whole power of the Monarchy, and they finished by 
sinking under the dictation of the Parisian Populace. The Constituent As- 
sembly numbered among its members many individuals of great ability, and of 
pure principles, but tliey were overawed and domineered by that other repre- 
sentation of the people of France, which, through the instrumentality of the 
Jacobin Club, and the Municipality of Paris, disconcerted the wisdom of the 
wise, and scattered to the winds the counsels of the prudent. It was impos- 
sible that, under the perturbations of such a controlling power, a Constitution 
suited to the character and circumstances of the Nation should be formed. 

Through the whole of this period, the part performed by Lafayette was without 
parallel in history. The annals of the human race exhibit no other instance of 
a position comparable for its unintermitted perils, its deep responsibilities, 
and its providential issues, with that which he occupied as Commander 
General of the National Guard, and as a leading member of the Constituent 
Assembly. In the numerous insurrections of the People, he saved the lives 
of multitudes, devoted as victims ; and always at the most imminent hazard 
of his own. On the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, he saved the lives of Louis 
Sixteenth, and of his Queen. He escaped, time afler time, the daggers shar- 
pened by princely conspiracy on one hand, and by popular frenzy on the other. 
He witnessed, too, without being able to prevent it, the butchery of Foulon 
before his eyes, and the reeking heart of Berthier, torn from his lifeless trunk, 
was held up in exulting triumph before liini. On this occasion, and on another, 
he threw up his commission as Commander of the National Guards ; but who 
could have succeeded him, even with equal power to restrain these volcanic 
excesses? At the earnest solicitation of those who well knew that his place 
could never be supplied, he resumed and continued in the command until the 
solemn proclamation of the Constitution, upon which he definitely laid it down, 
and retired to privajie life upon hi.'? estate in Auvero^ne. 

As a member of the Constituent Assembly, it is not in the detailed organiza- 
tion of the Government which they prepared, that his spirit and co-operation 
is to be traced. It is in the principles which he proposed and infused into 
the system. As, at the first Assembly of Notables, his voice had been raised 
for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment, for the extinction of religious 
intolerance, and for the representation of the People, so, in the National 
Assembly, besides the Declaration of Rights, which formed the basis of the 
Constitution itself, he made or supported the motions for the establishment 
of trial by jury, for the gradual emancipation of slaves, for the freedom of the 
Press, for the abolition of all titles of nobility ; and for the declaration of 
equality of all the citizens, and the suppression of all the privileged orders, 
without exception of the Princes of the royal family. Thus, while, as a 



2T 

ifegislator, he was spreading the principles of universal liberty over the whole ■ 
surface of the State, as commander-in-chief of the armed force of the Nation, 
lie was controlling, repressing, and mitigating, as far as it could be effected by 
human power, the excesses of the Peuplo. 

The Constitution was at length proclaimed, and the Constituent National 
Assembly was dissolved. In advance of this event, the sublime spectacle of 
the Federation was exhibited on the 14th of July, 1790, the first Anniversary of 
the destruction of the Bastille. There was an ingenious and fanciful association 
of ideas in the selection of that day. The Bastille was a State Prison, a 
massive structure, which had stood four hundred years, every stone of which 
was saturated with sighs and tears, and echoed the groans of four centuries of 
oppression. It was the very type and emblerh of the despotism which had so 
long weighed upon France. Demolished from its summit to its foundation at the 
first shout of Freedom from the People, lyhat day could be more appropriate 
than its anniversary for the day of solemn consecration of the new fabric of Gov- 
ernment, founded upon the rights of man? 

I shall not describe the magnificent and melancholy pageant of that day-- 
It has been done by abler hands, and in a style Vv'hich could only be weakened 
and diluted by repetition.* The religious solemnity of the mass was performed' 
by a Prelate, then eminent among tlie members of the Assembly and the digni- 
taries of the land ; still eminent, after surviving the whole circle of subsequent 
revolutions. No longer a father of the Church, but among the most distin- 
guished laymen and most celebrated statesmen of France, Ms was the voice to 
invoke the blessing of Heaven upon this new Constitution for his liberated 
counirij ; and he and Louis the Sixteenth, and Lafayette, and thirty thousand 
delegates from all the Confederated National Guards of the Kingdom, in 
the presence of Almighty God, and of five hundred thousand of their country- 
men, took the oath of fidelity to the Nation, to the Constitution, and all, save 
the Monarch himself, to the King. His corresponding oath was, of fidelity to 
discharge the duties of his high office , and to the People. 

Alas ! and was it all false and hollow 1 Had these oaths no more substance 
than the breath that ushered them to the winds ? It is impossible to look back 
upon the short and turbulent existence of this royal democracy, to mark the 
frequent paroxysms of popular frenzy by which it was assailed, and the cata- 
strophe by which it perished, and to believe that the vows of all who swore 
to support it were sincere. But, as well might the sculptor of a block of 
marble, afler exhausting his genius and his art in giving it a beautiful human 
form, call God to witness that it shall perform all the functions of animal life, 
as the Constituent Assembly of France could pledge the faith of its members^ 
that their royal democracy should work as a permanent organized form of 
government. The Declaration of Rights contained all the principles essential 
to freedom. The frame of government was radically and irreparably defective. 
The hereditary Royal Executive was itself an inconsistency with the Declara- 
tion of Rights. The Legislative power, all concentrated in a single Assembly^ 

* In the Address to the Young men of Boston, by Edward Everett, 



28 

was an incongruity still more glaring. These were both departures from tlie 
system of organization which Lafayette had witnessed in the American 
Constitutions : neither of them was approved by Lafayette. In deference to 
tlie prevailing opinions and prejudices of the times, he acquiesced in them, and 
he was destined to incur the most imminent hazards of his life, and to make 
the sacrifice of all that gives value to life itself, in faithful adherence to that 
Constitution which he had sworn to suppoit. 

Shortly after his resignation, as Commander General of the National Guards, 
the friends of liberty and order presented him as a candidate for election as 
Mayor of Paris ; but he had a competitor in the person ot Pethion, more suited 
to the party, pursuing with inexorable rancor the abolition of the Monarchy 
and the destruction of the King ; and, what may seem scarcely credible, the 
remnant of the party which still adhered to the King, the King himself, and, 
above all, the Queen, favored the election of the Jacobin Pethion, in preference 
to tliat of Lafayette. They were, too fatally for themselves, successful. 

From the first meeting of the Legislative Assembly, under tlie Constitution 
of 1791, the destruction of the King and of the monarchy, and the establish- 
ment of a Republic, by means of the popular passions and of popular violence, 
were the deliberate purposes of its leading members. The spirit with which the 
Revolution had been pursued, from the time of the destruction of the Bastille* 
had caused the emigration of great numbers of the Nobility and Clergy ; and, 
among them, of the two brothers of Louis the Sixteenth, and of several other 
Princes of his blood. They had applied to all the other great Monarchies of 
Europe for assistance to uphold or restore the crumbling Monarchy of France. 
The French Reformers themselves, in the heat of their political fanaticism, 
avow^ed, without disguise, the desigu to revolutionize all Europe, and had 
emissaries in every country, openly or secretly preaching the doctrine of 
jnsurrection against all established Governments. Louis the Sixteenth, and his 
Queen, an Austrian Princess, sister to the Emperor Leopold, were in secret 
negotiation with the Austrian Government for the rescue of the King and 
the royal family of France from the dangers with which they were so incessantly 
beset. In the Electorate of Treves, a part of the Germanic Empire, the 
emigrants from France were assembling, with indications of a design to enter 
France in hostile array, to effect a counter-revolution ; and the brothers of 
the King, assuming a position at Coblentz, on the borders of their country, were 
holding councils, tlie object of which was to march in arms to Paris, to 
release the King from captivity, and to restore the ancient Monarchy to the 
dominion of Absolute Power. 

The King, who, even before his forced acceptance of the Constitution of 
1791, had made an unsuccessful attempt to escape from his palace prison, was, 
in Api'ilj 1792, reduced to the humiliating necessity of declaring war against 
the very Sovereigns who were arming their Nations to rescue him from his 
revolted subjects. Three armies, each of fifty thousand men, were levied to 
meet the emergencies of this war, and were placed under tiie command of 
Luckncr, Rocliambeau, and Lafayette. As he passed through Paris to go 
and take the command of his army, lie appeared before the Legislative 



29 

Assembly, the President of vvhicli, in addressing liim, said tliat the Nation 
woidd oppose to tlicir enemies the Constitution and Lafayette. 

But the enemies to the Constitution v/cre within the walls. At this distance 
of time, when most of the men, and many of the passions of those days, have 
passeej away, when the Fi'ench Revolution, and its results, should be regarded 
with the searching eye of philosophical speculation, as lessons of experience to 
after ages, may it even nowbe permitted to remark how much the virtues and 
the crimes of men, in times of political convulsion, arcfmodihcd and character- 
ized by the circumstances in wliicli tlipy are placed. The great actors of the 
tremendous scenes of revolution of those timas were men educated in schools 
of iiigh civilization, and in tho humane and benevolent precepts of the Christian 
religion. A small portion of them wei-e vicious and depraved ; but the 
great majority were wound up to madness by that war of conflicting interests 
and absorbing passions, enkindled by a great convulsion of the social system. 
It has been said, by a great master of human nature — 

"In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man 

"As modest stillness and humility ; 

"But wiien tho blast of war blows in your ears, 

"Then imitate the action of the tiger." 
Too faithfully did the People of France, and t!ie leaders of their factions, in 
that war of all the political elements, obey that injunction. Who, that 
lived in that day, can remember 1 who, since born, can read, or bear to be 
told, the horrors of the 20th of June, the 10th of August, the 2d and 3d of 
September, 1792, of the 31st of May, 1793, and of a multitude of others, during 
which, in dreadful succession, the murderers of one day were the victims of 
the next, until that, whea the insurgent populace themselves were shot down 
by thousands, in the very streets of Paris, by the military legions of the 
Convention, and thefising fortune and genius of Napoleon Bonaparte 1 Who 
can remember, or read, or hear, of all this, without shuddering at the sight of 
man, his fellow-creature, in the drunkenness of political frenzy, degrading 
himself beneath the condition of the cannibal savage 1 beneath even the 
condition of the wild beasts of the desert f and who, but with a feeling of 
deep mortification can reflect that the rational and immortal being, to the race 
of which he himself belongs, should, even in his most palmy state of intellectual 
cultivation, be capable of this self-transformation to brutality ! 

In this dissolution of all the moral elements which regulate the conduct of 
men' in their social condition — in this monstrous, and scarcely conceivable 
spectacle of a King, at the head of a migiity Nation, in secret league with the 
enemies against whom he has proclaimed himself at war, and of a Legislature 
conspiring to destroy the King and Constitution to which they have sworn 
allegiance and support, Lafayette alone is seen to preserve his fidelity to the 
King, to the Constitution, and to his country, 

"Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 

"His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal." 
On the 16th of June, 1792, four days before the first violation of the Palace 



30 

of the Tuilleries by the populace of Paris, at the instigation of the Jacobins),, 
Lafayette, in a letter to the Legislative Assembly, had denounced the Jacobin 
Club, and called upon the Assembly to suppress them. He afterwards repaired 
to Paris in person, presented himself at the bar of the Assembly, repeated his 
denunciation of the Club, and took measures for suppressing their meetings by 
force. He proposed also to the King himself to furnish him witli means of with- 
drawing with his family to Compiegne, where he would have been out of 
the reach of that fero'cious and biood-thirsty multitude. The Assembly, by 
a great majority of votes, sustained the principles of his letter, but the King 
declined his proffered assistance to enable hirn to withdraw from Paris ; and of 
those upon whom he called to march with him, and shut up the hall where the 
Jacobins held their meetings, not more than thirteen persons pesented 
themselves at the appointed time. 

He returned to his army, and became thenceforth the special object of 
Jacobin resentment and revenge. On the 8th of August, on a preliminary 
measure to the intended insurrection of the 10th, the question was taken, after 
several days of debate, upon a formal motion that he should be put in accusation 
and tried. The last remnant of freedom in that Assembly was then seen by 
the vote upon nominal appeal, or yeas and nays, in which four hundred and 
forty-six votes were for rejecting the charge, and only two hundred and twenty- 
four for sustaining it. Two days after, the Tuilleries were stormed by popular 
insurrection. The unfortunate King was compelled to seek refuge, with his 
family, in the Hall of the Legislative Assembly, and escaped from being torn 
to pieces by an infuriated multitude, only to pass from his palace to the prison, 
in his way to the scaffold. 

This revolution, thus accomplished, annihilated the Constitution, the Gov- 
ernment, and tlie cause for which Lafayette had contended. The People of. 
France, by their acquiescence, a great portion of thefti by direct approval, . 
confirmed and sanctioned the abolition of the Monarchy. The armies and their 
commanders took the same victorious side : not a show of resistance was 
made to the revolutionary torrent, not an arm was lifted to restore the fallen 
Monarch to his throne, nor even to rescue or protect his person from the fury 
of his inexorable foes. Lafayette himself would have marched to Paris with 
his army, for the defence of the Constitution, but in this disposition he was 
not seconded by his troops. After ascertaining that the effort would be 
vain, and after arresting at Sedan the members of the Deputation from the 
Legislative Assembly, sent after their own subjugation, to arrest him, he deter- 
mined, as the only expedient left him to save his honor and his principles, to 
withdraw both from the army and the country ; to pass into a neutral territory, 
and thence into these United States, tlie country of his early adoption and 
his fond partiality, where he was sure of finding a safe asylum, and of meeting 
a cordial welcome. 

But his destiny had reserved him for other and severer trials. We have seen 
him struggling for the support of principles, against the violence of raging fac- 
tions, and the fickleness of the multitude ; we are now to behold him in the 



31 

hands ot the hereditary rulers of mankind, and to witness tlie nature of theix' 
tendermercies to him. 

It was in the neutral territory of Liege that he, together with his companions» 
Latonr Mauboarg, Bureau de Puzy, and Alexander Lameth, was taken by 
Austrians, and transferred to Prussian guards. Under the circumstances of the 
case, he could not, by the principles of the laws of Nations, be treated even 
as a prisoner of war. He was treated as a prisoner of State. Prisoners of 
State in the Monarchies of Europe are always presumed guilty, and are treated 
asif entitled as little to mercy as to justice. Lafayette was immured in dun- 
geons, first at Wesel, then at Magdeburg,'and, finally, at Olmutz, in Moravia. 
By what right 1 By none known among men. By what authority? That 
has never been avowed. For what cause"! None has ever been assigned. 
Taken by Austrian soldiers upon a neutral territory, handed over to Prussian 
jailers ; and, when Frederick William of Prussia abandoned his Austrian 
ally, and made his separate peace with republican France, he transferred his 
illustrious prisoner to the Austrians, from whom he had received him, that he 
might be deprived of the blessing of regaining his liberty, even from the hands 
of Peace. Five years was the duration of this imprisonment, aggravated by 
every indignity that could make oppression bitter. That it was intended as 
imprisonment for life, was not only freely avowed, but significantly made 
known to him by his jailers ; and while, with affected precaution, the means 
of terminating his sufferings by his own act were removed from him, the bar- 
barity of ill usage, of unwholesome food, and of a pestiferous atmosphere, was 
applied with inexorable rigor, as if to abridge the days which, at the same 
time, were rendered as far as possible insupportable to himself. 

Neither the generous sympathies of the gallant soldier. General Fitzpatrick, 
m the British House of Commons, nor the personal solicitation of Washington, 
President of the United States, speaking with the voice of a grateful Nation, 
nor the persuasive accents of domestic and conjugal affection, imploring the 
Monarch of Austria for the release of Lafayette, could avail. The unsophiscated 
feeling of generous nature in the hearts of men, at this outrage upon justice 
and humanity, was manifested in another form. Two individuals, private 
citizens, one, of the United States of America, Francis Huger, the other* 
a native of the Electorate of Hanover, Doctor Erick Bollmann, undertook at 
the imminent hazard of their lives, to supply means for his escape from prison, 
and their personal aid to its accomplishment. Their design was formed with 
great address, pursued with untiring perseverance, and executed with undaunt- 
ed intrepidity. It was frustrated by accidents beyond the control of human 
sagacity. 

To his persecutions, however, the hand of a wise and just Providence had, 
in its own time, and in its own way, prepared a termination. The hands 
of the Emperor Francis, tied by mysterious and invincible bands against 
the indulgence of mercy to the tears of a more than heroic wife, were loosened 
by the more prevailing eloquence, or, rather, were severed by the conquering 
sword of Napoleon Bonaparte, acting under instructions from the Executive 
Directory, then swaying the destinies of France. 



32 

Lafayette ami his fellow-sufferers were still und(;r the sentence ofproscrip- 
'tion issued by the faction which had destroyed the Constitution of 1791, and 
oiurdered the ill-fated Louis, and his Queen. But revolution had followed upon 
revolution since the downfall of the Monarchy, on the lOtli of August, .1792. 
The Federative Republicans oftheGironde had been butchered by the Jacobin 
Republicans of the Mountain. The Mountain had been subjugated by the 
Municipality of Paris, and the sections of Paris, by a reorganization of parties 
in the National Convention, and with aid from the armies. Brissot and his 
federal associates, Danton and his party, Robespierre and his subaltern demons, 
had successively perished, each by the measure applied to themselves which 
they had meted out to others ; and as no experiment of political empiricism 
"was to be omitted in the medley of the Frencli Revolutions, the hereditary 
E.vccutive, with a single Legislative Assembly, was succeeded by a Constitu- 
tion with a Legislature in two branches, a^id a five-headed Executive, eligible, 
annually one-fifth, by their concurrent votes, and bearing the name of a 
Directory. This was the Government at whose instance Lafayette was finally 
liberated from the dungeon of Olmutz. 

But, while this Directory were shaking to their deepest foundation afl 
the Monarchies of Europe ; while they were stripping Auj-ria, the most potent 
of them all, piecemeal of her territories ; while they were imposing upon her 
■the most humiliating conditions of peace, and bursting open her dungeons to 
restore their illustrious countryman to the light of day and the blessings of 
personal freedom, they were themselves exploding by internal combustion, 
<livided into two factions, each conspiring the destruction of the other. La- 
fayette received his freedom, only to seethe two members of the Directory^ 
who had taken the warmest interest ineffecting his liberation, outlawed and 
proscribed by their colleagues : one of them, Carnot, a fugitive from his 
-country, lurking in banishment to escape pursuit ; and the other, Barthelemy, 
deported, with fifty members of the Legislative Assembly, without form of trial, 
or even of legal process, to the pestilential climate of Guiana. All this was 
done with the approbation, expressed in the most unqualified terms, of Napo- 
leon, and with co-operation of his army. Upon being informed of the success 
of this Pride's purge, he wrote to the Directory that he had with him one hun- 
dred thousand men, upon whom they might rely to cause to bo respected all 
■the measures that thej* should take to establish liberty upon solid foundations. 

Two years afterwards, another revolution, directly accomplished by Na- 
poleon himself, demolished the Directory, the Constitutioji of the two Councils, 
and the solid liberty, to the support of which the hundred thousand men had 
-been pledged, and introduced another Constitution, with Bonaparte himself for 
its Executive Head, as the first of three Consuls, for five years. 

In the interval between these two revolutions, Latayette resided for about two 
years, first in the Danish Territory of Holstein, and, afterwards, at Utrecht, in 
the Batavian Republic. Neither of them had been effected by means or in a 
manner which could possibly meet his approbation. But the Consular Govern- 
ment commenced with broad professions of republican principles, on the faith 
of which he returned to France, and for a series of years resided in privacy and 



feliremcnt upon his estate of La Grange. Here, in the cultivation of his farm, 
and the enjoyment of domestic felicity, embittered only by the loss, in 1807, of 
that angel tipon earth, the partner of all the vicissitudes of his life, he employed 
his time, and witnessed the upward flight and downward fall of the soldier and 
5*iort of fortune, Napoleon Bonaparte. He had soon perceived the hollowness 
of the Consular professions of pure republican principles, and withheld himself 
from all participation in the Government. In 1802, he was elected a member 
of the General Council of the Department of Upper Loire, and, in declining 
the appointment, took occasion to present a review of his preceding life, and a 
pledge of his perseverance in the principles which he had previously sustained. 
" Far," said he, " from the scene of public affairs, and devoting myself at last 
to the repose of private life, my ardent wishes are, that external peace should 
soon prove the fruit of those miracles of glory which are even now surpassing 
the prodigies of the preceding campaigns, and that internal peace should be 
consolidated upon the essential and invariable foundations of true liberty. Hap- 
py that twenty-three years of vicissitudes in my fortune, and of constancy to 
my principles, authorise me to repeat, that, if a nation to recover its rig'its, 
needs only the will, they can only be preserved by inflexible fidelity to its 
obligations." 

When the first Consulate for five years was invented as one of the steps 
of the ladder of Napoleon's ambition, he suffered Sieyes, the member of 
the Directory whom he had used as an instrument for casting off that worse 
than worthless institution, to prepare another Constitution, of which he took 
as much as suited his purpose, and consigned the rest to oblivion. One of 
the wheels of this new political engine was a conservative Senate, forming the 
Peerage to sustain the Executive Head. This body it was the interest and 
the policy of Napoleon to conciliate, and he filled it with men who, through all 
the previous stages of the revolution, had acquired and maintained the highest 
respectability of character. Lafayette was urged with great earnestness, by 
Napoleon himself, to take a seat in this Senate ; but after several conferences 
with the First Consul, in which he ascertained the extent of his designs, he 
peremptorily declined. His answer to the Minister of War tempered his 
refusal with a generous and delicate compliment, alluding at the same time to the 
position which the consistency of his character made it his duty to occupy. 
To the first Consul himself, in terms equally candid and explicit, he said, " that 
from the direction which public affairs were taking, what he already saw, and 
what it was easy to foresee ; it did not seem suitable to his character to enter 
into an order of things contrary to his principles, and in which he would have 
to contend without success, as without public utility, against a man to whom 
he was indebted for great obligations." 

Not long afterwards, when all republican principle was so utterly prostrated 
that he was summoned to vote on the question whether the citizen Napoleon 
Bonaparte should be Consul for life, Lafayette added to his vote the following 
comment : " I cannot vote for such a Magistracy until the public liberty shall 
"have been sufficiently guaranteed ; and in that event I vote fgr Napoleon 

Bonaparte." 

5 



34 

He wrote at the same time to the first Consul a letter explanatory of his 
vote, which no Republican will now read without recognizing the image of 
inordinate and triumphant ambition cowering under the rebuke of disinter- 
ested virtue. 

" The 18th of Brumaire (said this letter) saved France ; and I felt myself re- 
called by the liberal professions to which you had attached your honor. 
Since then, we have seen in the Consular power, that reparatory dictatorship, 
which, under the auspices of your genius, has achieved so much ; yet not so 
much as will he the restoration of liberty. It is impossible that you. General, 
the first of that order of men, who, to compare and seat themselves, take in 
the compass of all ages, that you should wish such a revolution — so many vic- 
tories, so much blood, so many calamities and prodigies, should have for the 
world and for you no other result than an arbitrary Government. The French 
People have too well known their rights ultimately to forget them ; but perhaps 
they are now better prepared, than in the time of their effervescence, to recov- 
er them usefully ; and you, by the force of your character, and of the public 
confidence, by the superiority of your talents, of your position, of your for- 
tune, may, by the re-establishment of liberty, surmount every danger, and 
relieve every anxiety. I have, then, no other than patriotic and personal 
motives for wishing you this last addition to your glory — a permanent magis- 
tracy ; but it is due to the principles, the engagements, and the actions of my 
whole life, to wait, before giving my vote, until liberty shall have been settled 
upon foundations worthy of the nation and of you. I hope. General, that you 
will here find as heretofore, that with the perseverance of my political opinions 
are united sincere good wishes personally to you, and a profound sentiment of 
my obligations to you." 

The writer of this letter, and he to whom it was addressed, have, each in 
his appropriate sphere, been instruments of transcendant power, in the hands 
of Providence, to shape the ends of its wisdom in the wonderful story of the 
French Revolution. In contemplating the part which each of them had acted 
upon that great theatre of human destiny, before the date of the letter, how 
strange was at that moment the relative position of the two individuals to each 
other, and to the world! Lafayette was the founder of the great movement then 
in progress for the establishment of freedom in France, and in the European 
world ; but his agency had been all intellectual and moral. He had asserted 
and proclaimed the principles. He had never violated, never betrayed then*. 
Napoleon, a military adventurer, had vapored in proclamations, and had the 
froth of Jacobinism upon, his lips; but his soul was at the point of his sword. 
The Revolution was to Lafayette the cause of human kind ; to Napoleon 
it was a mere ladder of ambition. 

Yet, at tlie time when this letter was written, Lafayette, afler a series of 
immense sacrifices and unparalleled sufferings, was a private citizen, called to 
account to the world for declining to vote for placing Napoleon at the head 
of the French Nation, with arbitrary and indefinite power for life ; and 
Napoleon, amid professions of unbounded devotion to liberty, was, in the face 
of mankind, ascending the steps of an hereditary imperial and royal throne. 



35 

Such was tlieir relative position then : what is it now ? Has history a lesson 
for mankind more instructive than the contrast and the parallel of their fortunes 
and their fate ? Tinie and chance, and the finger of Providence, which, in 
every deviation from the path of justice, reserves or opens to itself an avenue 
of return, has brought eacli of these mighty men to a close of life, congenial 
to the character with which he travelled over its scenes. The Consul for life, 
the hereditary Emperor and King, expires a captive on a barren rock in the 
wilderness of a distant Ocean— separated from his imperial wife— separated 
from his son, who survives him only to pine away his existence, and die at 
the moment of manliood, in the condition of an Austrian Prince. The Apostle 
of Liberty survives, again to come forward, the ever consistent champion of her 
cause, and, finally to close his career in peace, a Republican without reproach 
in death, as he had been without fear throughout life. 

But Napoleon was to be the artificer of his own fortunes, prosperous and 
adverse. He was rising by the sword ; by the sword he was destined to fall. 
The counsels of wisdom and of virtue, fell forceless upon his ear, or sunk into 
his heart only to kindle resentment and hatred. He sought no further personal 
intercourse with Lafayette ; and denied common justice to his son, who had 
entered and distinguished himself in the army of Italy, and from whom he 
withheld the promotion justly due to his services. 

The career of glory, of fame, and of power, of which the Consulate for life 
was but the first step, was of ten years' continuance, till it had reached its 
zenith ; till the astonished eyes of mankind beheld the charity scholar of 
Brienne, Emperor, King, and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, 
banqueting at Dresden, surrounded by a circle of tributary crowned heads, 
among whom was seen that very Francis of Austria, the keeper, in his castle of 
Olmutz, of the republican Lafayette. And upon tliat day of the banqueting 
at Dresden, the star of Napoleon culminated from the Equator. Thenceforward 
it was to descend with motion far more rapid than when rising, till it sank 
in endless night. Through that long period, Lafayette remained in retirement 
at La Grange. Silent amidst the deafening shouts of victory from Marengo, , 
and Jena, and Austerlitz, and Friedland, and Wagram, and Borodino— silent 
at the conflagration of Moscow ; at the passage of the Beresina ; at the irre- 
trievable discomfiture at Leipzig ; at the capitulation at the gates of Paris, and 
at the first restoration of the Bourbons, under the auspices of the inveterate 
enemies of France — as little could Lafayette participate in the measures of 
that restoration, as in the usurpations of Napoleon. Louis the Eighteenth was 
quartered upon the French nation as the soldiers of the victorious armies were 
quartered upon the inhabitants of Paris. Yet Louis the Eighteenth, who held 
his Crown as the gift of the conquerors of France, the most humiUating of the 
conditions imposed upon the vanquished Nation, affected to hold it by Divine 
right, and to grant, as a special favor, a Charter, or Constitution, founded on the 
avowed principle that all the liberties of the Nation were no more than the 
gratuitous donations of the King. 

These pretensions, with a corresponding course of policy pursued by the 
reinstated Government of the Bourbons, and the disregard of the national 



36 

feelmcs and interests of France, with which Europe was remodelled at- the-. 
ConoTCSs of Vienna, opened the way for the return of Napoleon from Elba, 
within a year from the time he had been relegated there. He landed as a 
solitary adventurer, and the Nation rallied round him with rapture. He came 
with promises to the Nation of freedom as well as ot independence. The 
Allies of Vienna proclaimed against him a war of extermination, and reinvaded 
France with armies exceeding in numbers a million of men. Lafayette had 
been courted by Napoleon upon his return. He was again urged to take a seat 
in the House of Peers, but peremptorily declined, from aversion to its hereditary 
character. He had refused to resume his title of nobility, and protested against 
the Constitution of the Empire, and the additional act entailing the imperial 
hereditary Crown upon the family of Napoleon. But he offered himself as a 
candidate for election as a member of the popular Representative Chamber 
of the Legislature, and was unanimously chosen by the Electoral College 
of his Depaitment to that station. 

The battle of Waterloo was the last desperate struggle of Napoleon to 
recover bis fallen fortunes, and its issue fixed his destiny forever. He escaped 
almost alone from the field, and returned a fugitive to Paris, projecting to 
dissolve by armed force the Legislative Assembly, and, assuming a dictatorial 
power, to levy a new army, and try the desperate chances of another battle. 
This purpose v;as defeated by the energy and promptitude of Lafayette. At his 
instance the Assembly adopted three resolutions, one of which declared them 
in permanent session, and denounced any attempt to dissolve them as a 
crime of high treason. 

After a feeble and fruitless attempt of Napoleon, through his brother 
Lucien, to obtain from the Assembly itself a temporary dictatorial power, he 
abdicated the Liiperial Crown in favor of his infant son ; but his abdication 
could not relieve France from the deplorable condition to which he had 
reduced her. France, from the day of the battle of Waterloo, was at the 
mercy of the aUied Monarchs; and, as the last act of their revenge, they 
gave her again the Bourbons. France was constrained to receive them. It 
was at the point of the bayonet, and resistance was of no avail. The Legis- 
lative Assembly appoined a Provisional Council of Government, and Com- 
missioners, of whom Lafayette was one to negotiate with the allied armies 
then rapidly advancing upon Paris. 

The allies manifested no disposition to negotiate. They closed the doors 
of their Hall upon the Representatives of the people of France. They re-seat- 
ed Louis the Eighteenth upon his throne. Agaiiist these measures Lafay- 
ette and the members of the Assembly had no means of resistance left, save a 
fearless protest, to be remembered when the day of freedom should return. 

From the time of this second restoration until his death, Lafayette, who 
had declined accepting a seat in the hereditary Chamber of Peers, and inflexibly 
refused to resume his title of nobility, though the Charter of Louis the 
Eighteenth had restored them all, was almost constantly a member of the 
Chamber of Deputies, the popular branch of the Legislature. — More than 
once, however, the influence of the court was successful in defeating his 



a? 

election. — At one of these intervals, he employed the leisure afforded him iti 
revisiting the United States. 

Forty years had elapsed since he had visited and taken leave ofthein, at 
the close oftlie Revolutionary War. The greater part of the generation fdr 
and with wliom he had fought, his first fields, had passed away. Of the 
two millions of souls to whose rescue from oppression he had crossed the Ocean 
in 1777, not one in ten survived. But their places were supplied by more than 
five times their numbers, tlieir descendants and successors. The sentiment of 
gratitude and affection for Lafayette, far from declining with the lapse of timr, 
quickened in spirit as it advanced in years, and seemed to multiply with 
the increasing numbers of the People. The Nation had never ceased to 
sympathize with his fortunes, and, in every vicissitude ofhis life, had manifested 
the deepest interest in his welfare. He had occasionally expressed his intention 
to visit once more the scene of his early achievements, and a country which 
bad requited his services by a just estimate of their value. In February, 1824, 
a solemn legislative act, unanimously passed by both Houses of Congress, 
and approved by the President of the United States, charged the Chief 
Magistrate of the Nation with the duty of communicating to him the assurances 
of grateful and affectionate attachment still cherished for him by the Govern- 
ment and People of the United States, and of tendering to him a national ship, 
witli suitable accommodation, for his conveyance to this country. 

Ten years have passed away since the occurrence of that event. Since then 
the increase of population within the borders of our Unio r exceeds, in numbers, 
the whole mass of that infant community to whose liberties he had devoted, 
in early youth, his life and fortune. His companions and fellow-soldiers of 
the war of Independence, of whom a scanty remnant still e.xisted to join in the 
universal shout of welcome with which he landed upon our shores, have been 
since, in the ordinary course of nature, dropping away : pass hut a few short 
years more, and not an individual of that generation with which he toiled and 
bled in the cause of human kind, upon his first appearance on the field of 
human action, will be left. The gallant officer and distinguished Repre- 
sentative of the People, at whose motion, upon this floor, the invitation of 
the nation was given — the Chief Magistrate by whom, in compliance with the 
will of the Legislature, it was tendered — the surviving Presidents of the United 
States, and their venerable compeer signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
who received him to thfe arms of private friendship, while mingling their voices 
in the chorus of public exultation and joy, are no longer here to shed the tear 
of sorrow upon his departure from this earthly scene. They all preceded 
him in the translation to another, and, we trust, a happier world. The active, 
energetic manhood of the Nation, of whose infancy he had been the protector 
and benefactor, and who, by the protracted festivities of more than a year of 
jubilee, manifested to him their sense of the obligations for which they 
were indebted to him, are already descending into the vale of years. The 
children of the public schools, who thronged in double files to pass in review 
before him to catch a glimpse of his countenance, and a smile from his eye, 
are now among the men and women of the land, rearing inother generation 



as 

to envy their parents the joy which they can never share, of havinf^ seen and? 
contributed to the glorious and triumphant reception of Lafayette. 

Upon his return to France, Lafayette was received with a welcome hy 
his countrymen scarcely less enthusiastic than that with which he had been 
greeted in this country. From his landing at Havre till his arrival at his 
residence at La Grange, it was again one triumphal mairh, rendered but the 
more striking by the interuptions and obstacles of an envious and jealous 
Government. Threats were not even spared ot arresting him as a criminal, 
and holding him i-esponsible for the spontaneous and irrepressible feelings 
manifested by the People in his favor. He was, very soon after his return 
again elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and thenceforward, in 
that honorable and independent station, was the soul of that stedfast and 
inflexible party which never ceased to defend, and was ultimately destined 
to vindicate the liberties of France. 

The Government of the Bourbons, from the time of their restoration, was 
a perpetual struggle to return to the Saturnian times of absolute power. For- 
them the Sun and Moon had stood still, not, as in the miracle of ancient story, 
for about a whole day, but for more than a whole century. Re-seated upon 
their thrones, not, as the Stuarts had been in the seventeenth century, by the 
voluntary act of the same People which had expelled them, but by the arms 
of foreign Kings and hostile armies, instead of aiming, by the liberality of their 
Government, and by improving the condition of their People, to make them 
forget the humiliation of the yoke imposed upon them, they labored with mi- 
yielding tenacity to make it more galling. They disarmed the National 
Guards ; they crampted and crippled the right of suffrage in elections ; they 
perverted and travestied the institution of juries ; — they fettered the freedom 
of the Press, and in their external policy lent themselves, willing instruments 
to crush the liberties of Spain and Italy. The spirit of the Nation was 
curbed, but not subdued. The principles of freedom proclaimed in the de- 
claration of Rights of 1789 had taken too deep root to be extirpated. Charles 
the Tenth, by a gradual introduction into his councils of the most inveterate 
adherents to the anti-revolutionary Government, was preparing the way for the 
annihilation of the Charter and of the Legislative Representation of the 
People. In proportion as this plan approached to its maturity, tlie resistance 
of the Nation to its accomplisment acquired consistency and organization. 
The time had been, when, by the restrictions upon the right of suffrage, and 
the control of the Press, and even of the freedom of debate in the Legislature, 
the Opposition in the Chamber of Deputies had dwindled down to not more 
than thirty members. But, under a rapid succession of incompetent and 
unpopular Administration, the majority of the House of Deputies had passed 
from the side of the Court to that of the People. In August, 1829, the King, 
confiding in his imaginary strength, reorganized his Ministry by the appoint- 
ment of men whose reputation was itself a pledge of the violent and desperate 
designs in contemplation. At the first meeting of the Legislative Assembly, 
an address to the King, signed by two hundred and twenty-one out of four 
hundred members, declared to him, in respectful terms, that a concurrence of 



3^ 

Sentiments between Iiis Ministers aiul the Nation was indispensable to the 
liappincss of the People under his Government, and that this concurrence did 
not exist. He replied that his determination was immovable, and dissolved 
the Assembly. A new election was held ; and so odious throughout the Nation 
were the measures of the Court, that, of the two hundred and twenty-one 
members who had signed the address against the Ministers, more than two 
hundred were re-elected. The Opposition had also gained an accession 
of numbers in the remaining part of the Deputations, and it was apparent 
that, upon the meeting of the Assembly, the Court party could not be sustained. 

At this crisis, Charles the Tenth, as if i-esolved to leave himself not the shadow 
of a pretext to complain of his expulsion from the throne, in defiance of the 
Charter, to the observance of which he had solemnly sworn, issued, at one and 
the same time, four Ordinances — the first of which suspended the liberty 
of the Press, and prohibited the publication of all the daily newspapers and other 
periodical journals, but by license, revocable at pleasure, and renewable every 
three months ; the second annulled the election of Deputies, which had just 
taken place ; the third changed the mode of election prescribed by law, and 
reduced nearly by one half the numbers of the House of Deputies to be elected ; 
and the fourth commanded the new elections to be held, and fixed a day for 
the meeting of the Assembly to be so constituted. 

These Ordinances were the immediate occasion of the last Revolution of the 
three days, terminating in the final expulsion of Charles the Tenth from the 
throne, and of himself and his family from the Territory of France* This was 
effected by an insurrection of the people of Paris, which burst forth, by sponta- 
neous and unpremeditated movement, on the very day of the promulgation 
of the four Ordinances. The first of these, the suppression of all the daily 
newspapers, seemed as if studiously devised to provoke instantaneous resis- 
tance, and the conflict of physical force. Had Charles the Tenth issjied a 
decree to shut up all the bakehouses of Paris, it could not have been more 
fatal to his authority. The conductors of the proscribed journals, by mutual 
engagement among themselves, determined to consider the Ordinance as 
unlawful, null, and void ; and this was to all classes of the People the signal 
of resistance. The publishers of two of the journals, summoned immediately 
before the Judicial Tribunal, were justified in their resistance by the sentence 
of the court, pronouncing the Ordinance null and void. A Marshall of 
France receives the commands of the King to disperse, by force of arms, the 
population of Paris ; but the spontaneous Resurrection of the National Guard 
organizes at once an army to defend the liberties of the Nation. Lafayette 
is again called from his retreat at La Grange, and, by the unanimous voice 
of the People, confirmed by such Deputies of the Legislative Assembly aS 
were able to meet for common consultation at that trying emergency, is 
again placed at the head of the National Guard as their Commander-in-Chief'- 
He assumed the command on the second day of the conflict, and on the third 
Charles the Tenth had ceased to reign. He formally abdicated the crown, and 
his son, the Duke d'Angouleme, renounced his pretension to the succession. 
But, humble imitators of Napoleon, even in submitting to their own degradation, 



40 

Vney clung to the last gasp of hereditary sway, by transmitting all their claih't 
of dominion to the orphan child of the Duke de Berri. 

At an early stage of the Revolution of 1739, Lafayette had declared it as 
a principle, that insurrection against tyrants was the most sacred of duties. 
He had borrowed this sentiriient, perhaps, from the motto of Jefferson — "Re- 
bellion to tyrants is obedience to God." The principle itself is as sound as its 
enunciation is daring. Like all general maxims, it is susceptible of very dan- 
gerous abuses : the test of its truth is exclusively in the correctness of its 
application. As forrtiing apart of the political creed of Lafayette, it has been 
severely criticised ; nor can it be denied that, in the experience of the French ^ 
Revolutions, the cases in which popular insurrection has been resorted to, 
for the extinction of existing authority, have been so frequent, so unjustifiable 
in their causes, so atrocious in their execution, so destructive to liberty in their 
consequences, that the friends of Freedom, who know that she. can exist only 
under the supremacy of the law, have sometimes felt themselves constrained 
to shrink from the development of abstract truth, in the dread of the dangef 
with which she is surroninded. 

In the Revolution of the three days of 1830, it was the steady, calm, but 
inflexible adherance of Lafayette to this maxim which decided the fate of the 
Bourbons. After the struggles of the Teople had commenced, and even while 
liberty and power were grappling with each other for life or death, the Depu- 
ties elect to the Legislative Assembly, then at Paris, held several meetings 
at the house of their colleague, Laffitte, and elsewhere, at which the question 
of resistance against the Oirdinances was warmly debated, and aversion to 
that resistance by force was the sentiment predominant, in the minds of a 
majority of the members. The hearts of some of the most ardent patriots 
quailed within them at the thought of another overthrow of the Monarchy. All 
the horrible recollections of the reign of terror, the massacre of the prisons in 
September, the butcheries of the guillotine from year to year, the headless 
trunks of Brissot, and Danton, and Robespierre, and last, not least, the iron 
crown and sceptre of Napoleon himself, rose in hideous successioii before 
them, and haunted their imaginations. They detested the Ordinances, but 
hoped that, by negotiation and remonstrance with the recreant King, it might 
yet be possible to obtain a revocation of them, and the substitution of a more 
liberal Ministry. This deliberation was not concluded till Lafayette appeared 
among them. From that moment the die was cast. They had till then no 
■military leader. Louis Phillippe, of Orleans, had not then been seen among 
them. 

In all the changes of Government in France, from the first Assembly of No- 
tables, to that day, there never had been an act of authority presenting a case for 
-the fair and just apphcation of the duty of resistance against oppression, so 
clear, so unquestionable, so flagrant as this. " The violations of the Charter were 
so gross and palpable that the most determined Royalist could not deny them. 
The mask had been laid aside. The sword of despotism had been drawn, 
and the scabbard cast away. A King, openly forsworn, had forfeited every 
■claim to allegiance ; and the only resource of the Nation against him was 



41 

resistance by force. This was the opinion of Lafayette, and he declared him- 
self ready to take the command of the National Guard, should the wish of the 
People, already declared tlais to place hi.m at the head of this spontaneous 
movement, be confirmed by his colleagues of the Legislative Assembly. The 
appointment was accordingly conferred upon him, and the second day after- 
• wards Charles the Tenth and his family were fugitives to a foreign land. 

France was without a Government. tShe might then have constituted 
licrselfa Republic ; and such was, undoubtedly, the aspiration of a very large 
portion of her population.' But with another, and yet larger portion of her 
People, the name of Republic was identified with the memory of Robespierre, 
It was held in execration ; there was imminent danger, if not absolute certainty, 
that the attempt to organize a Republic would have been the signal for a 
new civil war. The name of a Republic, too, v.^as hateful to all the neighbors 
of France ; to the Confederacy of Emperors and Kings, \yhich had twice 
replaced the Bourbons upon the throne, and who might be propitiated under 
the disappointment and mortification of the result, by the retention of the 
name of King, and the substitution of the semblairce of a Bourbon for the reality. 

The People of France, like the Cardinal de Retz, more than two centuries 
before, wanUd a descend&nt from Henry the Fourth, who could speak the 
language of the Parisian populace and who had known what it was to be a 
Plebeian. They found him in the person of Louis Phillippe, of Orleans. 
Lafayette himself was compelled to compromise with his principles, purely 
and simply republican, and to accept him, first as Lieutenant General of the 
Kingdon, and then as hereditary King. There was, perhaps, in this determin- 
ation, besides tlie motives which operated upon others, a consideration of disin- 
tei-ested delicacy, which could be applicable only to himself. If the Republio 
should be proclaimed, he knew that the Chief Magistracy could be delegated 
only to himself. It must have been a Chief Magistracy for life, which, at hia 
age, could only have been for a short term of years. Independent of the ex- 
treme danger, and difficulties to himself, to his family and to his country, in 
which the position which he would have occupied might hnve involved them, 
the inquiry could not escape his forecast, who, upon his demise, could bo hia 
successor 1 and what must be the position occupied by him ? If, at the mo- 
ment, he had but spoken the word, he might have closed his career with 
a crown upon his head, .and with a withering blast upon his name to the end, 
of time. 

With the Duke of Orleans himself, he used no concealment or disguise. 
When the crown was offered to that Prince, and he looked to Lafayette for 
consultation, "you know, (said he) that I am of tU American School, and par- 
tial to the Constitution of the United States." So, it seems, was Louis Phillip- 
pe. "L think with you," said he. "It is impossible to pass two years in tha 
United States, without being convinced that their Government'is the best m the 
world. But do you think it suited to our present circumstances and condition 
No, replied Lafayette. They require a Monarchy surrounded by popular 
institutions. So thought, also, Louis Phillippe ; and ha accepted th« Crov^ft 
under the conditions upon which it was tendered to him, 

6 



42 . • 

XiafByette retained the command of the National Guard so long as it was. 
eseentiai to the settlement of the new order of things, on the basis of order and 
of freedom ; eo long as was essential to control the stormy and excited passions . 
of the Parisian People: so long as it was necessary to save the Ministers of the 
guilty but fallen Monarch from the rash and revengeful resentments of their 
conquerors. When this was accomplished, and the People Lad been preserved 
from the calamity of shedding in peace the blood of war, he once more resigned 
his command, retired in privacy to Lo grange, and resumed his post as a Deputy 
in the Legislative Assembly, — which he continued to hold till the close of life. 

His station there was still at the head of the phalanx, supporters of liberal 
principles and of constitutional freedom. In Spain, in Portugal, in Italy, and 
above all, in Poland, the cause of liberty has been struggling against the hand 
of power, and, to the last hour of his life, they found in Lafayette a never 
failing friend and patron. 

In his last illness, the standing which he held in the heart of mankind, was 
attested by the formal resolution of the House of Deputies, sent to make inqui- 
ries concerning his condition ; and, dying, as he did, tull of years and of glory, 
never in the history of mankind, has a private individual departed-more univer- 
eally lamented by the whole generation of men whom he has left behind. 

Such, Legislators of the JNIorth x^.mericaa Confederate Union, ivas the 
life of Gilbert Metier de Lafayette, and the record of his life is the delineation 
of his character. Consider him as one human being of one thousand millions* 
his cotemporaries on the surface of the terraqueous globe. Among that 
thousand millions seek for an object of comparison with him ; assume for the 
standard of comparison all the virtues which exalt tlie character of man above 
that, of the brute creation ; take the ideal man, little lower than the angels ; 
mark tiie qualities of the mind and heart which entitle him to this station of 
pre-eminence in the scale of created beings, and inquire who, that lived in 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Christian sera, combined in 
himself so many of those qualities, so little alloyed with those which belong to 
that earthly vesture of decay in which the immortal spirit is enclosed, as La- 
fiiyette. 

Pronounce him one of the first men ofhis-age, and you have yet not done him 
justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar 
and selfish spirit of Napoleon ; class him among the men who, to compare and 
seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages ; turn back your eyes upoii. 
the records of time ; summon from the creation of the world to this day the 
mighty dead of every age and every clime— and where, among the race of 
merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind. 
Bhall claim to take precedence of Lafayette ? 

There have doubtless been, in all ages, men, whose discoveries or inventions, 
in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of 
man over the material creation ; have increased his means or his faculties of 
enjoyment ; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and hap- 
pier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in this present state of 
existence. 



43 



Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics 'or of morals. IIo. 
invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the law.s 
of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal Nobihty, under 
the most absolute iVlonarchy of Europe, in possession of an atHuent fortune, 
and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining 
manhood,' the principle of republican justice and of social equality took posses- 
sion of his lieart and mind, as if by inspiration from above, lie devoted himsell") 
his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid 
hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He cams to another hemisphere to defend 
her. He became one of the most effective champions of bur Independence ; 
but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and henceforward took 
no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our Revo- 
lution, and in the forms of policy wTiich we have adopted for the establishment 
and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of 
government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have ahslracled 
nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary Republic of Plato, or the Utopia of 
Sir Thomas More, he took a practical existing model, in actual operation here, 
and never attempted or wislied more than to apply it faithfully to his own 
country. 

It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land ; but he saw it from the 
summit of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the consum- 
mation of his wishes in the establishment of a Republic, and the extinction 
of all hereditary rule in France. His principles wei'e in advance of the age 
and hemisphere in which he lived. A Bourbon still reigiis on the throne of 
France, and it is not for us to scrutinize the title by which he reigns. The 
principles of (?iective and hereditary power, blended in reluctant union in 
his person, like the red and white roses of York and Lancaster, may post- 
pone to aftertime the last conflict to which they must ultimately come> The 
life of the Patriarch was not long enough for the developement of his whole 
political system. Its final accomplishment is in the womb of time. 

The anticipation of this event is the more certain, from the consideration 
that all the principles for which Lafayette contended were practical. He 
never indulged himself in wild and fanciful speculations. The principle of 
hereditary power was, in his opinion, the bane of all republican liberty in 
Uurope. Unable to extinguish it in the Revolution of 1830, so far as concerned 
the Chief Magistracy of the Nation, Lafayette had the satisfaction of seeing 
it abolished with reference to the Peerage. An hereditary Crown, stript of the 
supjport which it may derive from an hereditary Peerage, however compatible 
with Asiatic despotism, is an anomaly in the history of the Christian world ^ 
and in the theory of free Government. There is no argument producible 
against the existence of an hereditary Peerage, but applies with aggravated 
weight against the transmission, from sire to son, of an hereditary Crown. 
The prejudices and passions of the People of France rejected the principle of 
inherited power, in every station of public trust, excepting the first and 
highest of them all ; but there they clung to it, as did the Israelites of old to 
the eavory deities of Egypt. 



This IS )iot the liuio or the place ibr a disq'ii.sition upon the companiilve 
merits, as a system of government, ofa Republic, and a Moiiarcl)y surrounded by 
republican institutions. Upon this subject there is among uy no diversity of 
-pinion ; and if it slioukl take the People of Prance f^nother half century 
of internal and external war,.of dazzling and delusive glories ; of unparalleled 
triumphs, lurtniiiating r-everscs, and bitter disappointments, to settle it to tlieir 
satisfaction, the ultimate result can only bring them to the point where we have 
stood from the day of the Declaration of Independence — to the point 
where Lafayette would have bronglit them, and to which lie looked as a con- 
summation devoutly to he Vv'isbcd. • 

Then, too, and then onl}', will be the time when the character of Lafayette 
will be appreciated at its triie value tln-oughout the civilized world. When 
ihe principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in all the institu- 
tions of France; when Government shall iio longer be considered as property 
transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust committed for a limited time, and 
then'to return to the People whence it came ; as a burdensome duty to be dis- 
charged, and not as a reward to be abused ; when a claim, any claim, to political 
power by 'inheriiance shall, in the estimation of the whole French People, 
be held as it now is by the whole People of the North American Union — then 
will be the time for contemplating the character of Lafayette, not merely in 
tlie events of his life, but, in the full development of his intellectual concep- 
tions, of his fervent aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his 
iono- and eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward, till the honor when 
. the trump of the Archangel shall sound to announce t!iat Time shall be no 
"^more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the aimals of our race, 
%igh on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind- 



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